I 

WfiRfim 

■'-■■■ 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. ' Copyright No. 

Shelf2ll57l 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



V 



6 /y 



THE WORKS OF 

EDWARD EVERETT HALE 

3Lfbrar£ B&ftton 

Volume VII. 



HOW TO DO IT 
HOW TO LIVE 




///////■/ ////// - ~fan 



PREFACE 

SINCE I have been able to think of such things, 
I have been surprised that there are so few 
books on what may be called " Practical Ethics." I 
could take down from my own shelves three hun- 
dred books which discuss the origin of the moral 
sense, — why there are duties and why we should 
try to discharge them. But in the same collection 
of books I should, find it hard to select twenty on 
the details of the practical business of life. I have 
a few books, very few, which tell how to skate, 
how to swim, and how to ride on horseback. 
These certainly belong to what I should call 
" Practical Ethics." But when you ascend a little 
from that grade of duties, the books of practical 
advice are fewer and fewer. 

When I entered college, for instance, no one 
told me, by word of mouth or in writing, any- 
thing of the practical management of the fifteen 
hours a day which were given into my care. I 
knew, in general, that I ought to be regular in my 
recitations, and that I ought to know my lesson 
when I arrived there. But nobody told me whether 
it were better to study between nine and ten 



vi Preface 

o'clock in the evening or between six and seven 
in the morning. 

A distinguished clergyman, always an invalid 
when I knew him, a little before me in college, 
told me, when near the end of his life, that his 
broken health was due to his absolute neglect of 
physical exercise during the first three and a half 
years that he was at Cambridge. He was pro- 
foundly interested in his studies, and was en- 
grossed in them. Nobody ever told him that 
physical exercise had anything to do with health. 
He told me that week after week would pass in 
which he did not leave the College Yard. In our 
day things were a little better, but not much better. 

When we were seniors, we were made to hear 
Dr. John Ware deliver a course of lectures on the 
preserving of health, and very good lectures they 
were. Our joke about them was, that we heard 
them after our constitutions were entirely broken. 
But as to any practical lessons in mental, moral, or 
spiritual hygiene, with the exception of a hint you 
sometimes got in a sermon, nobody seemed to care. 

In the volume in the reader's hands, he will find 
one of Dr. Lieber's rules for Girard College : " No 
mathematical exercise is to be attempted for two 
hours after a hearty meal." When I read this, in 
1842, it was to recollect that in my freshman year 
we were ordered daily from the dining-room to 
the room opposite for the hour's difficult exercise 
in geometry or trigonometry. 

The volume in the reader's hands consists of 



Preface 



vn 



different essays of mine, selected from a much 
larger number, written to meet, as well as I knew 
how, these difficulties. " How to Do It " was a sep- 
arate book, made up from eight articles originally 
published in the magazine called " Our Young 
Folks," and eight others, written in some sort as a 
sequel to these, for the weekly newspaper called 
"The Youth's Companion." I have been pleased 
to know that it has been introduced as a text-book 
in some of the high schools at the West, where 
perhaps they are* not so much afraid of heresy or 
other indiscretion as we are at the East. 

When Mr. Lowell asked me to deliver a course 
of Lowell lectures in Boston in the year 1869, I 
gladly consented, on the condition that I might 
lecture on the Divine Method in Human Life. 
The lectures were an attempt to give practical in- 
struction in the duties of sleep, of the regulation 
of appetite, and exercise ; these three for the 
body. Again, for the training of the mind in the 
processes of memory, logic, and the imagination; 
and again there were three more on the enlarge- 
ment of life in the three eternities, Faith, Hope, 
and Love. 

In the year 1886, at Dr. Vincent's request, I en- 
larged and printed these lectures, as the ethical 
lessons of the year in the great Chautauqua 
Course. In this form, under the general title 
" How to Live," those papers are included in this 
volume. A few other essays in similar lines, all 
that the volume gives room for, are added. 



viii Preface 

I may as well say here in a few words, what is 
implied in a dozen places in the book, that edu- 
cation in morals is the prime object for which 
schools should be maintained. Instruction in 
facts, to which so much time is generally given, is 
not the prime object in education. 

EDWARD E. HALE. 

39 Highland St., Roxbury, Mass., 
Jan. 26, 1900. 



How to Do It 



TO WHICH IS ADDED 



How to Live 



BY 



s 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE 




BOSTON 
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1900 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 

library of Congrnit 
°«lce of tk% 

WAP9- 1900 

Kegl.t.r of C.p, f | ghu 

56162 .V 

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, 

By James R. Osgood and Company, 



In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886, 

By Theodore L. Flood, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 

Copyright, 1900, 
By Little, Brown, and Company. 



All rights reserved. 



ScC J,\D uOr»Y, 






Santorsita peas 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



CONTENTS 

HOW TO DO IT 

Chapter Page 

I. Introductory. — How we Met . . i 

II. How to Talk 19 

III. Talk 34 

IV. How to Write 50 

V. How to Read. 1 71 

VI. How to Read. II 93 

VII. How to go into Society 105 

VIII. How to Travel 118 

IX. Life at School 132 

X. Life in Vacation 139 

XI. Life Alone 145 

XII. Habits in Church 157 

XIII. Life with Children 163 

XIV. Life with your Elders 171 

XV. Habits of Reading ' 179 

XVI. Getting Ready 186 



Contents 



HOW TO LIVE 

Chapter Page 

I. Introduction 197 

II. How to Choose one's Calling .... 204 

III. How to Sleep 211 

IV. How to Exercise 225 

V. Appetite 237 

VI. How to Think 254 

VII. How to Study 269 

VIII. How to Know God 284 

IX. How to Bear your Brother's Burdens . 298 

X. How to Regulate Expense 312 

XI. How to Dress 326 

XII. How to Deal with one's Children . . 342 

XIII. How to Remain Young 358 

XIV. Duty to the Church 373 

XV. Duty to the State 384 



HOW TO DO IT 



CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY — HOW WE MET 

THE papers which are here collected enter in 
some detail into the success and failure of a 
large number of young people of my acquaintance, 
who are here named as — 



Alice Faulconbridge, 
Bob Edmeston, 
Clara, 

Clem Waters, 
Edward Holiday, 
Ellen Liston, 
Emma Fortinbras, 
Enoch Putnam, brother of 

Horace, 
Esther, 
Fanchon, 
Fanny, cousin to Hatty 

Fielding, 
Florence, 
Frank, 
George Ferguson (Asaph 

Ferguson's brother)^ 
Hatty Fielding, 
Herbert, 
Horace Putnam, 



Horace Felltham, 

Jane Smith, 

Jo Gresham, 

Justin, 

Laura Walter, 

Maud Ingletree, 

Oliver Ferguson, brother to 

Asaph and George, 
Pauline, 
Rachel, 
Robert, 

Sarah Clavers, 
Stephen, 
Sybil, 
Theodora, 
Tom Rising, 
Walter, 

William Hackmatack, 
William Withers. 



2 How to do It 

It may be observed that there are thirty-four 
of them. They make up a very nice set, or 
would do so if they belonged together. But, in 
truth, they live in many regions, not to say 
countries. None of them are too bright or too 
stupid, only one of them is really selfish, all 
but one or two are thoroughly sorry for their 
faults when they commit them, and all of them 
who are good for anything think of themselves 
very little. There are a few who are approved 
members of the Harry Wadsworth Club. That 
means that they " look up and not down," they 
" look forward and not back," they " look out and 
not in," and they " lend a hand." These papers 
were first published, much as they are now col- 
lected, in the magazine Our Young Folks, and in 
that admirable weekly paper The Youth's Com- 
panion, which is held in grateful remembrance 
by a generation now tottering off the stage, and 
welcomed, as I see, with equal interest by the 
grandchildren as they totter on. From time to 
time, therefore, as the different series have gone 
on, I have received pleasant notes from other 
young people, whose acquaintance I have thus 
made with real pleasure, who have asked more 
explanation as to the points involved. I have 
thus been told that my friend Mr. Henry Ward 
Beecher is not governed by all my rules for 
young people's composition, and that Miss Throck- 
morton, the governess, does not believe Arch- 
bishop Whately is infallible. I have once and 



Introductory 3 

again been asked how I made the acquaintance 
of such a nice set of children. And I can well 
believe that many of my young correspondents 
would in that matter be glad to be as fortunate 
as I. 

Perhaps, then, I shall do something to make the 
little book more intelligible, and to connect its 
parts, if in this introduction I tell of the one 
occasion when the dramatis persona met each 
other ; and in order to that, if I tell how they all 
met me. 

First of all, then, my dear young friends, I began 
active life as soon as I had left college, as I can 
well wish all of you might do. I began in keep- 
ing school. Not that I want to have any of you 
do this long, unless an evident fitness or " manifest 
destiny" appear so to order. But you may be 
sure that, for a year or two of the start of life, 
there is nothing that will teach you your own 
ignorance so well as having to teach children 
the few things you know, and to answer, as best 
you can, their questions on all grounds. There 
was poor Jane, on the first day of that charming 
visit with the Penroses, who was betrayed by the 
simplicity and cordiality of the dinner-table — 
where she was the youngest of ten or twelve 
strangers — into taking a protective lead of all 
the conversation, till at the very last I heard her 
explaining to dear Mr. Tom Coram himself, — a 
gentleman who had lived in Java ten years, — that 
coffee-berries were red when they were ripe. I 



4 How to do It 

was sadly mortified for my poor Jane as Tom's 
eyes twinkled. She would never have got into 
that rattletrap way of talking if she had kept 
school for two years. Here, again, is a capital 
letter from Oliver Ferguson, Asaph's younger 
brother, describing his life on the Island at Paris 
all through the siege. I should have sent it yes- 
terday to Mr. Osgood, who would be delighted to 
print it in the Atlantic Monthly, but that the 
spelling is disgraceful. Mr. Osgood and Mr. 
Howells would think Oliver a fool before they had 
read down the first page. " L-i-n, lin, n-e-n, nen, 
linen." Think of that ! Oliver would never have 
spelled " linen " like that if he had been two years 
a teacher. You can go through four years at 
Harvard College spelling so, but you cannot go 
through two years as a schoolmaster. 

Well, I say I was fortunate enough to spend two 
years as an assistant schoolmaster at the old Bos- 
ton Latin School, — the oldest institution of learn- 
ing, as we are fond of saying, in the United States. 
And there first I made my manhood's acquaintance 
with boys. 

"Do you think," said dear Dr. Malone to me 
one day, " that my son Robert will be too young 
to enter college next August?" "How old will 
he be? " said I, and I was told. Then as Robert 
was at that moment just six months younger than 
I, who had already graduated, I said, wisely, that I 
thought he would do ; and Dr. Malone chuckled, I 
doubt not, as I did certainly, at the gravjty of 



Introductory 5 

my answer. A nice set of boys I had. I had 
above me two of the most loyal and honorable of 
gentlemen, who screened me from all reproof for 
my blunders. My discipline was not of the best, 
but my purposes were; and I and the boys got 
along admirably. 

It was the old schoolhouse. I believe I shall 
explain in another place, in this volume, that it 
stood where Parker's Hotel stands, and my room 
occupied the spot in space where you, Florence, 
and you, Theodora, dined with your aunt Dorcas 
last Wednesday before you took the cars for An- 
dover, — the ladies' dining-room looking on what 
was then Cooke's Court, and is now Chapman 
Place. Cooke was Elisha Cooke, who went to 
England for the charter. So Mr. Saltonstall re- 
minds me. What we call " Province Street " was 
then " Governor's Alley." For in Province Court, 
the building now Sargent's Hotel was for a cen- 
tury, more or less, the official residence of the 
Governor of Massachusetts. It was the " Province 
House." 

On the top of it, for a weathercock, was the 
large mechanical brazen Indian, who, whenever he 
heard the Old South clock strike twelve, shot off 
his brazen arrow. The little boys used to hope to 
see this. But just as twelve came was the bustle 
of dismissal, and I have never seen one who did 
see him, though for myself I know he did as was 
said, and have never questioned it. That oppor- 
tunity, however, was upstairs, in Mr. Dixwell's 



6 How to do It 

room. In my room, in the basement, we had no 
such opportunity. 

The glory of our room was that it was supposed, 
rightly or not, that a part of it was included in 
the old schoolhouse which was there before the 
Revolution. There were old men still living who 
remembered the troublous times, the times that 
stirred boys' souls, as the struggle for independence 
began. I have myself talked with Jonathan Darby 
Robins, who was himself one of the committee 
who waited on the British general to demand that 
their coasting should not be obstructed. There is 
a reading piece about it in one of the school-books. 
This general was not Gage, as he is said to be in 
the histories, but General Haldimand; and his 
quarters were at the house which stood nearly 
where Franklin's statue stands now, just below 
King's Chapel. His servant had put ashes on the 
coast which the boys had made, on the sidewalk 
which passes the Chapel as you go down School 
Street. When the boys remonstrated, the servant 
ridiculed them, — he was not going to mind a 
gang of rebel boys. So the boys, who were much 
of their fathers' minds, appointed a committee, of 
whom my friend was one, to wait on General Hal- 
dimand himself. They called on him, and they 
told him that coasting was one of their inalienable 
rights and that he must not take it away. The 
General knew too well that the people of the town 
must not be irritated to take up his servant's quar- 
rel, and he told the boys that their coast should 



Introductory 7 

not be interfered with. So they carried their 
point. The story-book says that he clasped his 
hands and said, " Heavens ! Liberty is in the very 
air ! Even these boys speak of their rights as do 
their patriot sires ! " But of this Mr. Robins told 
me nothing, and as Haldimand was a Russian offi- 
cer of no great enthusiasm for liberty, I do not, 
for my part, believe it. 

The morning of April 19, 1775, Harrison Gray 
Otis, then a little boy eight years old, came 
down Beacon Street to school, and found a brigade 
of red-coats in line along Common Street, — as 
Tremont Street was then called, — so that he 
could not cross into School Street. They were 
Earl Percy's brigade. Class in history, where did 
Percy's brigade go that day, and what became of 
them before night ? A red-coat corporal told the 
Otis boy to walk along Common Street and not 
try to cross the line. So he did. He went as far 
as Scollay's Building before he could turn their 
flank, then he went down to what you call Wash- 
ington Street, and came up to school,- — late. 
Whether his excuse would have been sufficient I 
do not know. He was never asked for it. He 
came into school just in time to hear old Lovel, 
the Tory schoolmaster, say, "War's begun and 
school's done. Dimittite libros" — which means, 
" Put away your books." They put them away, 
and had a vacation of a year and nine months 
thereafter, before the school was open again. 

Well, in this old school I had spent four years 



8 How to do It 

of my boyhood, and here, as I say, my man- 
hood's acquaintance with boys began. I taught 
them Latin, and sometimes mathematics. Some 
of them will remember a famous Latin poem we 
wrote about Pocahontas and John Smith. All of 
them will remember how they capped Latin verses 
against the master, twenty against one, and put 
him down. These boys used to cluster round my 
table at recess and talk. Danforth Newcomb, a 
lovely, gentle, accurate boy, almost always at the 
head of his class, — he died young. Shang-hae, San 
Francisco, Berlin, Paris, Australia, — I don't know 
what cities, towns, and countries have the rest of 
them. And when they take this book for their own 
boys, they will find some of their boy-stories here. 
Then there was Mrs. Merriam's 1 boarding-school. 
If you will read the chapter on travelling you will 
find about one of the vacations of her girls. Mrs. 
Merriam was one of Mr. Ingham's old friends, — 
and he is a man with whom I have had a great 
deal to do. Mrs. Merriam opened a school for 
twelve girls. I knew her very well, and so it 
came that I knew her ways with them. Though 
it was a boarding-school, still the girls had just as 
" good a time " as they had at home, and when I 
found that some of them asked leave to spend va- 
cation with her I knew they had better times. I 
remember perfectly the day when Mrs. Phillips 
asked them down to the old mansion-house, which 

1 For " Mrs. Merriam," see " Mrs. Merriam's Scholars." Her 
pupils remember her as Miss Hannah Stearns. 



Introductory 9 

seems so like home to me, to eat peaches. And 
it was determined that the girls should not think 
they were under any " company " restraint, so 
no person but themselves was present when the 
peaches were served, and every girl ate as many 
as for herself she determined best. When they all 
rode horseback, Mrs. Merriam and I used to ride 
together with these young folks, behind or before, 
as it listed them. So, not unnaturally, being a 
friend of the family, I came to know a good many 
of them very well. 

For another set of them — you may choose the 
names to please yourselves — the history of my 
relationship goes back to the Sunday-school of the 
Church of the Unity in Worcester. The first time 
I ever preached in that church, namely, May 3, 
1846, there was but one person in it who had gray 
hair. All of us of that day have enough now. 
But we were a set of young people, starting on a 
new church, which had, I assure you, no dust in 
the pulpit-cushions. And almost all the children 
were young, as you may suppose. The first meet- 
ing of the Sunday-school showed, I think, thirty- 
six children, and more of them were under nine 
than over. They are all twenty-five years older 
now than they were then. Well, we started with- 
out a library for the Sunday-school. But in a 
corner of my study Jo Matthews and I put up 
some three-cornered shelves, on which I kept 
about a hundred books such as children like, and 
young people who are no longer children ; and then, 



i o How to do It 

as I sat reading, writing, or stood fussing over my 
fuchsias or labelling the mineralogical specimens, 
there would come in one or another nice girl or 
boy, to borrow a " Rollo " or a " Franconia," or to 
see if Ellen Liston had returned " Amy Herbert." 
And so we got very good chances to find each 
other out. It is not a bad plan for a young minis- 
ter, if he really want to know what the young 
folk of his parish are. I know it was then and 
there that I conceived the plan of writing " Mar- 
garet Percival in America" as a sequel to Miss 
Sewell's " Margaret Percival," and that I wrote 
my half of that history. 

The Worcester Sunday-school grew beyond 
thirty-six scholars; and I have since had to do 
with two other Sunday-schools, where, though the 
children did not know it, I felt as young as the 
youngest of them all. And in that sort of life 
you get chances to come at nice boys and nice 
girls which most people in the world do not 
have. 

And the last of all the congresses of young 
people which I will name, where I have found 
my favorites, shall be the vacation congresses, — 
when people from all the corners of the world 
meet at some country hotel, and wonder who the 
others are the first night, and, after a month, won- 
der again how they ever lived without knowing 
each other as brothers and sisters. I never had 
a nicer time than that day when we celebrated 
Arthur's birthday by going up to Greely's Pond. 



Introductory 1 1 

"Could Amelia walk so far? She only eight 
years old, and it was the whole of five miles by 
a wood-road, and five miles to come back again." 
Yes, Amelia was certain she could. Then, " whether 
Arthur could walk so far, he being nine." Why, 
of course he could if Amelia could. So eight-year- 
old, nine-year-old, ten-year-old, eleven-year-old, 
and all the rest of the ages, — we tramped off 
together, and we stumbled over the stumps, and 
waded through the mud, and tripped lightly, like 
Sonnambula in the opera, over the log bridges, 
which were single logs and nothing more, and 
came successfully to Greely's Pond, — beautiful 
lake of Egeria that it is, hidden from envious and 
lazy men by forest and rock and mountain. And 
the children of fifty years old and less pulled off 
shoes and stockings to wade in it; and we caught 
in tin mugs little seedling trouts not so long as 
that word " seedling " is on the page, and saw 
them swim in the mugs and set them free again ; 
and we ate the lunches with appetites as of Ar- 
cadia ; and we stumped happily home again, and 
found, as we went home, all the sketch-books and 
bait-boxes and neckties which we had lost as we 
went up. On a day like that you get intimate, if 
you were not intimate before. 

Oh dear ! don't you wish you were at Waterville 
now? 

Now, if you please, my dear Fanchon, we will 
not go any further into the places where I got 
acquainted with the heroes and heroines of this 



1 2 How to do It 

book. Allow, of those mentioned here, four to the 
Latin school, five to the Unity Sunday-school, six 
to the South Congregational, seven to vacation 
acquaintance, credit me with nine children of my 
own and ten brothers and sisters, and you will 
find no difficulty in selecting who of these are 
which of those, if you have ever studied the 
science of " Indeterminate Analysis " in Professor 
Smythe's Algebra. 

"Dear Mr. Hale, you are making fun of us. 
We never know when you are in earnest." 

Do not be in the least afraid, dear Florence. 
Remember that a central rule for comfort in life 
is this, " Nobody was ever written down an ass, 
except by himself." 

Now I will tell you' how and when the partic- 
ular thirty-four names above happened to come 
together. 

We were, a few of us, staying at the White 
Mountains. I think no New England summer is 
quite perfect unless you stay at least a day in the 
White Mountains. " Staying in the White Moun- 
tains" does not mean climbing on top of a stage- 
coach at Centre Harbor, and riding by day and by 
night for forty-eight hours till you fling yourself 
into a railroad-car at Littleton, and cry out that 
" you have done them." No. It means just living 
with a prospect before your eye of a hundred miles' 
radius, as you may have at Bethlehem or the 
Flume; or, perhaps, a valley and a set of hills, 
which never by accident look twice the same, as 



Introductory 1 3 

you may have at the Glen House or Dolly Cop's 
or at Waterville; or with a gorge behind the 
house, which you may thread and thread and 
thread day in and out, and still not come out 
upon the cleft rock from which flows the first 
drop of the lovely stream, as you may do at Jack- 
son. It means living front to front, lip to lip, 
with Nature at her loveliest, Echo at her most mys- 
terious, with Heaven at its brightest and Earth at 
its greenest, and, all this time, breathing, with 
every breath, an atmosphere which is the elixir of 
life, so pure and sweet and strong. At Greely's 
you are, I believe, on the highest land inhabited 
in America. That land has a pure air upon it. 
Well, as I say, we were staying in the White 
Mountains. Of course the young folks wanted to 
go up Mount Washington. We had all been up 
Osceola and Black Mountain, and some of us had 
gone up on Mount Carter, and one or two had 
been on Mount Lafayette. But this was as noth- 
ing till we had stood on Mount Washington him- 
self. So I told Hatty Fielding and Laura to go 
on to the railroad-station and join a party we 
knew that were going up from there, while Jo 
Gresham and Stephen and the two Fergusons and 
I would go up on foot by a route I knew from 
Randolph over the real Mount Adams. Nobody 
had been up that particular branch of Israel's run 
since Channing and I did in 1841. Will Hack- 
matack, who was with us, had a blister on his 
foot, so he went with the riding party. He said 



14 How to do It 

that was the reason, perhaps he thought so. The 
truth was he wanted to go with Laura, and nobody- 
need be ashamed of that any day. 

I spare you the account of Israel's river, and of 
the lovely little cascade at its very source, where 
it leaps out between two rocks. I spare you the 
hour when we lay under the spruces while it 
rained, and the little birds, ignorant of men and 
boys, hopped tamely round us. I spare you even 
the rainbow, more than a semicircle, which we 
saw from Mount Adams. Safely, wetly, and hun- 
gry, we five arrived at the Tiptop House about 
six, amid the congratulations of those who had 
ridden. The two girls and Will had come safely 
up by the cars, — and who do you think had got 
in at the last moment when the train started but 
Pauline and her father, who had made a party up 
from Portland and had with them Ellen Liston 
and Sarah Clavers? And who do you think had 
appeared in the Glen House party, when they 
came, but Esther and her mother and Edward 
Holiday and his father? Up to this moment of 
their lives some of these young people had never 
seen other some. But some had, and we had 
not long been standing on the rocks making out 
Sebago and the water beyond Portland before they 
were all very well acquainted. All fourteen of us 
went in to supper, and were just beginning on the 
goat's milk, when a cry was heard that a party of 
young men in uniform were approaching from the 
head of Tuckerman's Ravine. Jo and Oliver ran 



Introductory 1 5 

out, and in a moment returned to wrench us all 
from our corn-cakes that we might welcome the 
New Limerick boat-club, who were on a pedestrian 
trip and had come up the Tuckerman Notch that 
day. Nice, brave fellows they were, — a little 
foot-sore. Who should be among them but Tom 
himself and Bob Edmeston. They all went and 
washed, and then with some difficulty we all got 
through tea, when the night party from the 
Notch House was announced on horseback, and 
we sallied forth to welcome them. Nineteen in 
all, from all nations. Two Japanese princes, and 
the Secretary of the Dutch legation, and so on, 
as usual; but what was not as usual, jolly Mr. 
Waters and his jollier wife were there, — she 
astride on her saddle, as is the sensible fashion 
of the Notch House, — and, in the long stretch- 
ing line, we made out Clara Waters and Clem, not 
together, but Clara with a girl whom she did not 
know, but who rode better than she, and had 
whipped both horses with a rattan she had. And 
who should this girl be but Sybil Dyer ! 

As the party filed up, and we lifted tired girls 
and laughing mothers off the patient horses, I 
found that a lucky chance had thrown Maud 
and her brother Stephen into the same caravan. 
There was great kissing when my girls recog- 
nized Maud, and when it became generally 
known that I was competent to introduce to 
others such pretty and bright people as she and 
Laura and Sarah Clavers were, I found myself 



1 6 How to do It 

very popular, of a sudden, and in quite general 
demand. 

And I bore my honors meekly, I assure you. 
I took nice old Mrs. Van Astrachan out to a 
favorite rock of mine to see the sunset, and, what 
was more marvellous, the heavy thunder-cloud, 
which was beating up against the wind; and I 
left the young folks to themselves, only aspiring 
to be a Youth's Companion. I got Will to bring 
me Mrs. Van Astrachan's black furs, as it grew 
cold, but at last the air was so sharp and the 
storm clearly so near, that we were all driven in 
to that nice, cosey parlor at the Tiptop House, 
and sat round the hot stove, not sorry to be shel- 
tered, indeed, when we heard the heavy rain on 
the windows. 

We fell to telling stories, and I was telling of 
the last time I was there, when, by great good 
luck, Starr King turned up, having come over 
Madison afoot, when I noticed that Hall, one of 
those patient giants who kept the house, was 
called out, and, in a moment more, that he returned 
and whispered his partner out. In a minute more 
they returned for their rubber capes, and then we 
learned that a man had staggered into the stable 
half frozen and terribly frightened, announcing 
that he had left some people lost just by the 
Lake of the Clouds. Of course, we were all im- 
mensely excited for half an hour or less, when Hall 
appeared with a very wet woman, all but sense- 
less, on his shoulder, with her hair hanging down 



Introductory 1 7 

to the ground. The ladies took her into an inner 
room, stripped off her wet clothes, and rubbed her 
dry and warm, gave her a little brandy, and 
dressed her in the dry linens Mrs. Hall kept 
ready. Who should she prove to be, of all the 
world, but Emma Fortinbras ! The men of the 
party were her father and her brothers Frank and 
Robert. 

No ! that is not all. After the excitement was 
over they joined us in our circle round the stove, 

— and we should all have been in bed, but that 
Mr. Hall told such wonderful bear-stories, and 
it was after ten o'clock that we were still sitting 
there. The shower had quite blown over, when 
a cheery French horn was heard, and the cheery 
Hall, who was never surprised, I believe, rushed 
out again, and I need not say Oliver rushed out 
with him and Jo Gresham, and before long we 
all rushed out to welcome the last party of the 
day. 

These were horseback people, who had come by 
perhaps the most charming route of all, — which 
is also the oldest of all, — from what was Ethan 
Crawford's. They did not start till noon. They 
had taken the storm, wisely, in a charcoal camp, 

— and there are worse places, — and then they 
had spurred up, and here they were. Who were 
they? Why, there was an army officer and his 
wife, who proved to be Alice Faulconbridge, and 
with her was Hatty Fielding's Cousin Fanny, and 
besides them were Will Withers and his sister 



1 8 How to do It 

Florence, who had made a charming quartette 
party with Walter and his sister Theodora, and 
on this ride had made acquaintance for the first 
time with Colonel Mansfield and Alice. All this 
was wonderful enough to me, as Theodora ex- 
plained it to me when I lifted her off her horse, 
but when I found that Horace Putnam and his 
brother Enoch were in the same train, I said I did 
believe in astrology. 

For though I have not named Jane Smith nor 
Fanchon, that was because you did not recognize 
them among the married people in the Crawford 
House party, — and I suppose you did not recog- 
nize Herbert either. How should you? But, in 
truth, here we all were up above the clouds on the 
night of the 25th of August. 

Did not those Ethan Crawford people eat as if 
they had never seen biscuits? And when at last 
they were done, Stephen, who had been out in the 
stables, came in with a black boy he found there, 
who had his fiddle; and as the Colonel Mans- 
field party came in from the dining-room, Steve 
screamed out, " Take your partners for a Virginia 
Reel." No ! I do not know whose partner was 
who; only this, that there were seventeen boys 
and men and seventeen girls or women, besides 
me and Mrs. Van Astrachan and Colonel Mans- 
field and Pauline's mother. And we danced till 
for one I was almost dead, and then we went to 
bed, to wake up at five in the morning to see the 
sunrise. 



How to Talk 19 

As we sat on the rocks, on the eastern side, I 
introduced Stephen to Sybil Dyer, — the last two 
who had not known each other. And I got talk- 
ing with a circle of young folks about what the 
communion of saints is, — meaning, of course, just 
such unselfish society as we had there. And so 
dear Laura said, *} Why will you not write us down 
something of what you are saying, Mr. Hale?" 
And Jo Gresham said, " Pray do, — pray do; if 
it were only to tell us — 

" HOW TO DO IT." 

CHAPTER II 

HOW TO TALK 

I WISH the young people who propose to read 
any of these papers to understand to whom they 
are addressed. My friend, Frederic Ingham, has 
a nephew, who went to New York on a visit, 
and while there occupied himself in buying 
" travel-presents " for his brothers and sisters at 
home. His funds ran low; and at last he found 
that he had still three presents to buy and only 
thirty-four cents with which to buy them. He 
made the requisite calculation as to how much 
he should have for each, — looked in at Ball and 
Black's, and at Tiffany's, priced an amethyst neck- 
lace, which he thought Clara would like, and a set 
of cameos for Fanfan, and found them beyond his 
reach. He then tried at a nice little toy-shop 
there is a little below the Fifth Avenue House, 



20 How to do It 

on the west, where a " clever " woman and a 
good-natured girl keep the shop, and, having 
there made one or two vain endeavors to suit 
himself, asked the good-natured girl if she had 
not " got anything a fellow could buy for about 
eleven cents." She found him first one article, 
then another, and then another. Wat bought 
them all, and had one cent in his pocket when 
he came home. 

In much the same way these several articles 
of mine have been waiting in the bottom of my 
inkstand and the front of my head for seven or 
nine years, without finding precisely the right 
audience or circle of readers. I explained to Mr. 
Fields — the amiable Sheik of the amiable tribe 
who prepare the Young Folks for the young 
folks — that I had six articles all ready to write, 
but that they were meant for girls say from thir- 
teen to seventeen, and boys say from fourteen to 
nineteen. I explained that girls and boys of this 
age never read the Atlantic, Oh, no, not by any 
means ! And I supposed that they never read the 
Young Folks, Oh, no, not by any means ! I ex- 
plained that I could not preach them as sermons, 
because many of the children at church were too 
young, and a few of the grown people were too 
old ; that I was, therefore, detailing them in con- 
versation to such of my young friends as chose to 
hear. On which the Sheik was so good as to pro- 
pose to provide for me, as it were, a special oppor- 
tunity, which I now use. We jointly explain to 



How to Talk 21 

the older boys and girls, who rate between the ages 
of thirteen and nineteen, that these essays are ex- 
clusively for them. 

I had once the honor — on the day after Lee's 
surrender — to address the girls of the 12th Street 
School in New York. " Shall I call you ' girls ' or 
'young ladies'?" said I. "Call us girls, call us 
girls," was the unanimous answer. I heard it with 
great pleasure ; for I took it as a nearly certain 
sign that these three hundred young people were 
growing up to be true women, — which is to say, 
ladies of the very highest tone. 

" Why did I think so ? " Because at the age of 
fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen they took pleasure 
in calling things by their right names. 

So far, then, I trust we understand each other, 
before any one begins to read these little hints of 
mine, drawn from forty-five years of very quiet 
listening to good talkers; which are, however, 
nothing more than hints — 

HOW TO TALK. 

Here is a letter from my nephew Tom, a spirited, 
modest boy of seventeen, who is a student of the 
Scientific School at New Limerick. He is at home 
with his mother for an eight weeks' vacation ; and 
the very first evening of his return he went round 
with her to the Vandermeyers', where was a little 
gathering of some thirty or forty people, — most 
of them, as he confesses, his old schoolmates, a 
few of them older than himself. But poor Tom 



22 How to do It 

was mortified, and thinks he was disgraced, be- 
cause he did not have anything to say, could not 
say it if he had, and, in short, because he does not 
talk well. He hates talking parties, he says, and 
never means to go to one again. 

Here is also a letter from Esther W., who may 
speak for herself, and the two may well enough 
be put upon the same file, and be answered 
together : — 

" Please listen patiently to a confession. I have what 
seems to me very natural, — a strong desire to be liked 
by those whom I meet around me in society of my own 
age ; but, unfortunately, when with them my manners 
have often been unnatural and constrained, and I have 
found myself thinking of myself, and what others were 
thinking of me, instead of entering into the enjoyment 
of the moment as others did. I seem to have naturally 
very little independence, and to be very much afraid of 
other people, and of their opinion. And when, as you 
might naturally infer from the above, I often have not 
been successful in gaining the favor of those around me, 
then I have spent a great deal of time in the selfish in- 
dulgence of * the blues,' and in philosophizing on the 
why and the wherefore of some persons' agreeableness 
and popularity and others' unpopularity." 

There, is not that a good letter from a nice girl ? 

Will you please to see, dear Tom, and you also, 
dear Esther, that both of you, after the fashion of 
your age, are confounding the method with the 
thing. You see how charmingly Mrs. Pallas sits 
back and goes on with her crochet while Dr. 



How to Talk 23 

Volta talks to her ; and then, at the right moment, 
she says just the right thing, and makes him 
laugh, or makes him cry, or makes him defend 
himself, or makes him explain himself; and you 
think that there is a particular knack or rule for 
doing this so glibly, or that she has a particular 
genius for it which you are not born to, and there- 
fore you both propose hermitages for yourselves 
because you cannot do as she does. Dear chil- 
dren, it would be a very stupid world if anybody 
in it did just as anybody else does. There is no 
particular method about talking or talking well. 
It is one of the things in life which " does itself." 
And the only reason why you do not talk as easily 
and quite as pleasantly as Mrs. Pallas is, that you 
are thinking of the method, and coming to me to 
inquire how to do that which ought to do itself 
perfectly, simply, and without any rules at all. 

It is just as foolish girls at school think that 
there is some particular method of drawing with 
which they shall succeed, while with all other 
methods they have failed. " No, I can't draw in 
india-ink [pronounced in-jink], V I can't do any- 
thing with crayons, — I hate crayons, — 'n' I can't 
draw pencil-drawings, 'n' I won't try any more; 
but if this tiresome old Mr. Apelles was not so ob- 
stinate, V would only let me try the ' monochro- 
matic drawing,' I know I could do that. 'T so 
easy. Julia Ann, she drew a beautiful piece in 
only six lessons." 

My poor Pauline, if you cannot see right when 



24 How to do It 

you have a crayon in your hand, and will not draw 
what you see then, no " monochromatic system " 
is going to help you. But if you will put down 
on the paper what you see, as you see it, whether 
you do it with a cat's tail, as Benjamin West did 
it, or with a glove turned inside out, as Mr. Hunt 
bids you do it, you will draw well. The method 
is of no use, unless the thing is there; and when 
you have the thing, the method will follow. 

So there is no particular method for talking which 
will not also apply to swimming or skating, or read- 
ing or dancing, or in general to living. And if 
you fail in talking, it is because you have not yet 
applied in talking the simple master-rules of life. 

For instance, the first of these rules is, — 

Tell the Truth. 

Only last night I saw poor Bob Edmeston, who 
has got to pull through a deal of drift-wood before 
he gets into clear water, break down completely in 
the very beginning of his acquaintance with one 
of the nicest girls I know, because he would not 
tell the truth, or did not. I was standing right 
behind them, listening to Dr. Ollapod, who was 
explaining to me the history of the second land- 
grant made to Gorges, and between the sen- 
tences I had a chance to hear every word poor 
Bob said to Laura. Mark now, Laura is a nice, 
clever girl, who has come to make the Watsons a 
visit through her whole vacation at Poughkeepsie ; 
and all the young people are delighted with her 



How to Talk 25 

pleasant ways, and all of them would be glad to 
know more of her than they do. Bob really wants 
to know her, and he was really glad to be intro- 
duced to her. Mrs. Pollexfen presented him to 
her, and he asked her to dance, and they stood on 
the side of the cotillon behind me and in front of 
Dr. Ollapod. After they had taken their places, 
Bob said : " Jew go to the opera last week, Miss 
Walter?" He meant, "Did you go to the opera 
last week?" 

" No," said Laura, " I did not." 

"Oh, 'twas charming!" said Bob. And there 
this effort at talk stopped, as it should have done, 
being founded on nothing but a lie; which is to 
say, not founded at all. For, in fact, Bob did not 
care two straws about the opera. He had never 
been to it but once, and then he was tired before 
it was over. But he pretended he cared for it. 
He thought that at an evening party he must talk 
about the opera, and the lecture season, and the 
assemblies, and a lot of other trash, about which 
in fact he cared nothing, and so knew nothing. 
Not caring and not knowing, he could not carry 
on his conversation a step. The mere fact that 
Miss Walter had shown that she was in real sym- 
pathy with him in an indifference to the opera 
threw him off the track which he never should 
have been on, and brought his untimely conversa- 
tion to an end. 

Now, as it happened, Laura's next partner 
brought her to the very same place, or rather she 



26 How to do It 

never left it, but Will Hackmatack came and 
claimed her dance as soon as Bob's was done. Dr. 
Ollapod had only got down to the appeal made to 
the Lords sitting in Equity, when I noticed Will's 
beginning. He spoke right out of the thing he 
was thinking of. 

" 1 saw you riding this afternoon," he said. 

"Yes," said Laura, "we went out by the red 
mills, and drove up the hill by Mr. Pond's." 

"Did you?" said Will, eagerly. "Did you see 
the beehives?" 

" Beehives ? no, — are there beehives ? " 

"Why, yes, did not you know that Mr. Pond 
knows more about bees than all the world beside? 
At least, I believe so. He has a gold medal from 
Paris for his honey or for something. And his 
arrangements there are very curious." 

" I wish I had known it," said Laura. " I kept 
bees last summer, and they always puzzled me. I 
tried to get books ; but the books were all writ- 
ten for Switzerland, or England, or anywhere but 
Orange County." 

" Well," said the eager Will, " I do not think 
Mr. Pond has written any book, but I really guess 
he knows a great deal about it. Why, he told 
me — " &c, &c.,'&c. 

It was hard for Will to keep the run of the 
dance ; and before it was over he had promised to 
ask Mr. Pond when a party of them might come 
up to the hill and see the establishment ; and he 
felt as well acquainted with Laura as if he had 



How to Talk 27 

known her a month. All this ease came from 
Will's not pretending an interest where he did not 
feel any, but opening simply where he was sure of 
his ground, and was really interested. More sim- 
ply, Will did not tell a lie, as poor Bob had done 
in that remark about the opera, but told the truth. 

If I were permitted to write more than thirty- 
five pages of this note-paper (of which this is the 
nineteenth), I would tell you twenty stories to the 
same point. And please observe that the distinc- 
tion between the two systems of talk is the eternal 
distinction between the people whom Thackeray 
calls snobs and the people who are gentlemen and 
ladies. Gentlemen and ladies are sure of their 
ground. They pretend to nothing that they are 
not. They have no occasion to act one or another 
part. It is not possible for them, even in the 
choice of subjects, to tell lies. 

The principle of selecting a subject which thor- 
oughly interests you requires only one qualifica- 
tion. You may be very intensely interested in 
some affairs of your own ; but in general society 
you have no right to talk of them, simply because 
they are not of equal interest to other people. Of 
course you may come to me for advice, or go to 
your master, or to your father or mother, or to 
any friend, and in form lay open your own troubles 
or your own life, and make these the subject of 
your talk. But in general society you have no 
right to do this. For the rule of life is, that men 
and women must not think of themselves, but of 



28 How to do It 

others ; they must live for others, and then they 
will live rightly for themselves. So the second 
rule for talk would express itself thus : — 

DO NOT TALK ABOUT YOUR OWN AFFAIRS. 

I remember how I was mortified last summer, 
up at the Tiptop House, though I was not in the 
least to blame, by a display Emma Fortinbras 
made of herself. There had gathered round the 
fire in the sitting-room quite a group of the differ- 
ent parties who had come up from the different 
houses, and we all felt warm and comfortable and 
social; and, to my real delight, Emma and her 
father and her cousin came in, — they had been 
belated somewhere. She was a sweet pretty little 
thing, really the belle of the village, if we had 
such things, and we are all quite proud of her in 
one way ; but I am sorry to say that she is a little 
goose, and sometimes she manages to show this 
just when you don't want her to. Of course she 
shows this, as all other geese show themselves, by 
cackling about things that interest no one but her- 
self. When she came into the room, Alice ran to 
her and kissed her, and took her to the warmest 
seat, and took her little cold hands to rub them, 
and began to ask her how it had all happened, and 
where they had been, and all the other questions. 
Now, you see, this was a very dangerous position. 
Poor Emma was not equal to it. The subject was 
given her, and so far she was not to blame. But 
when, from the misfortunes of the party, she rushed 



How to Talk 29 

immediately to detail individual misfortunes of her 
own, resting principally on the history of a pair 
of boots which she had thought would be strong 
enough to last all through the expedition, and 
which she had meant to send to Sparhawk's be- 
fore she left home to have their heels cut down, 
only she had forgotten, and now these boots were 
thus and thus, and so and so, and she had no 
others with her, and she was sure that she did not 
know what she should do when she got up in the 
morning, — I say when she got as far as this, in 
all this thrusting upon people who wanted to 
sympathize, a set of matters which had no connec- 
tion with what interested them, excepting so far 
as their personal interest in her gave it, she vio- 
lated the central rule of life ; for she showed she 
was thinking of herself with more interest than 
she thought of others with. Now to do this is 
bad living, and it is bad living which will show 
itself in bad talking. 

But I hope you see the distinction. If Mr. 
Agassiz comes to you on the field-day of the 
Essex Society, and says : " Miss Fanchon, I under- 
stand that you fell over from the steamer as you 
came from Portland, and had to swim half an hour 
before the boat reached you. Will you be kind 
enough to tell me how you were taught to swim, 
and how the chill of the water affected you, and, 
in short, all about your experience?" he then 
makes a choice of the subject. He asks for all 
the detail. It is to gratify him that you go into 



30 How to do It 

the detail, and you may therefore go into it just 
as far as you choose. Only take care not to lug in 
one little detail merely because it interests you, 
when there is no possibility that, in itself, it can 
have an interest for him. 

Have you never noticed how the really provok- 
ing silence of these brave men who come back 
from the war gives a new and particular zest to 
what they tell us of their adventures? We have 
to worm it out of them, we drag it from them by 
pincers, and, when we have it, the flavor is all 
pure. It is exactly what we want, — life highly 
condensed ; and they could have given us indeed 
nothing more precious, as certainly nothing more 
charming. But when some Bobadil braggart vol- 
unteers to tell how he did this and that, how he 
silenced this battery, and how he rode over that 
field of carnage, in the first place we do not be- 
lieve a tenth part of his story, and in the second 
place we wish he would not tell the fraction which 
we suppose is possibly true. 

Life is given to us that we may learn how to 
live. That is what it is for. We are here in a 
great boarding-school, where we are being trained 
in the use of our bodies and our minds, so that 
in another world we may know how to use other 
bodies and minds with other faculties. Or, if you 
please, life is a gymnasium. Take which figure 
you choose. Because of this, good talk, following 
the principle of life, is always directed with a gen- 
eral desire for learning rather than teaching. No 



How to Talk 31 

good talker is obtrusive, thrusting forward his ob- 
servation on men and things. He is rather recep- 
tive, trying to get at other people's observations ; 
and what he says himself falls from him, as it 
were, by accident, he unconscious that he is say- 
ing anything that is worth while. As the late 
Professor Harris said, one of the last times I saw 
him, "There are unsounded depths in a man's na- 
ture of which he himself knows nothing till they 
are revealed to him by the plash and ripple of his 
own conversation with other men." This great 
principle of life, when applied in conversation, 
may be stated simply, then, in two words, — 

Confess Ignorance. 

You are both so young that you cannot yet 
conceive of the amount of treasure that will yet 
be poured in upon you, by all sorts of people, if 
you do not go about professing that you have all 
you want already. You know the story of the 
two school-girls on the Central Railroad. They 
were dead faint with hunger, having ridden all 
day without food, but, on consulting together, 
agreed that they did not dare to get out at any 
station to buy. A modest old doctor of divinity, 
who was coming home from a meeting of the 
11 American Board," overheard their talk, got some 
sponge-cake, and pleasantly and civilly offered it 
to them as he might have done to his grand- 
children. But poor Sybil, who was nervous and 
anxious, said, "No, thank you," and so Sarah 



32 How to do It 

thought she must say, " No, thank you," too ; and 
so they were nearly dead when they reached the 
Delavan House. Now just that same thing hap- 
pens whenever you pretend, either from pride or 
from shyness, that you know the thing you do not 
know. If you go on in that way you will be 
starved before long, and the coroner's jury will 
bring in a verdict, "Served you right." I could 
have brayed a girl, whom I will call Jane Smith ' 
last night at Mrs. Pollexfen's party, only I remem- 
bered, "Though thou bray a fool in a mortar, his 
foolishness will not depart from him," and that 
much the same may be said of fools of the other 
sex. I could have brayed her, I say, when I saw 
how she was constantly defrauding herself by cut- 
ting off that fine Major Andrew, who was talking 
to her, or trying to. Really, no instances give you 
any idea of it. From a silly boarding-school habit, 
I think, she kept saying " Yes," as if she would be 
disgraced by acknowledging ignorance. " You 
know," said he, " what General Taylor said to 
Santa Anna, when they brought him in?" 
"Yes," simpered poor Jane, though in fact she 
did not know, and I do not suppose five people 
in the world do. But poor Andrew, simple as a 
soldier, believed her and did not tell the story, 
but went on alluding to it, and they got at once 
into helpless confusion. Still, he did not know 
what the matter was, and before long, when they 
were speaking of one of the Muhlbach novels, he 
said, M Did you think of the resemblance between 



How to Talk 33 

the winding up and ' Redgauntlet ' ? " " Oh, yes," 
simpered poor Jane again, though, as it proved, 
and as she had to explain in two or three minutes, 
she had never read a word of " Redgauntlet." 
She had merely said " Yes," and " Yes," and " Yes," 
not with a distinct notion of fraud, but from an 
impression that it helps conversation on if you 
forever assent to what is said. This is an utter 
mistake : for, as I hope you see by this time, con- 
versation really depends on the acknowledgment 
of ignorance, — being, indeed, the providential 
appointment of God for the easy removal of such 
ignorance. 

And here I must stop, lest you both be tired. 
In my next paper I shall begin again, and teach 
you (4) to talk to the person you are talking with, 
and not simper to her or him, while really you are 
looking all round the room, and thinking of ten 
other persons; (5) never in any other way to 
underrate the person you talk with, but to talk 
your best, whatever that may be ; and (6) to be 
brief, — a point which I shall have to illustrate at 
great length. 

If you like, you may confide to the Letter-Box 
your experiences on these points, as well as on 
the three on which we have already been engaged. 
But, whether you do or do not, I shall give to you 
the result, not only of my experiences, but of at 
least 5,872 years of talk — Lyell says many more 
— since Adam gave names to chattering monkeys. 



34 How to do It 



CHAPTER III 

TALK 

MAY I presume that all my young friends be- 
tween this and Seattle have read paper Num- 
ber Two? First class in geography, where is 
Seattle? Right. Go up. Have you all read, 
and inwardly considered, the three rules, "Tell 
the truth; " "Talk not of yourself; " and " Con- 
fess ignorance"? Have you all practised them, 
in moonlight sleigh-ride by the Red River of the 
North, — in moonlight stroll on the beach by St. 
Augustine, — in evening party at Pottsville, — 
and at the parish sociable in Northfield? Then 
you are sure of the benefits which will crown your 
lives if you obey these three precepts ; and you 
will, with unfaltering step, move quickly over the 
kettle-de-benders of this broken essay, and from 
the thistle, danger, will pluck the three more 
flowers which I have promised. I am to teach 
you, fourth, — 

TO TALK TO THE PERSON WHO IS TALKING TO YOU. 

This rule is constantly violated by fools and 
snobs. Now you might as well turn your head 
away when you shoot at a bird, or look over your 
shoulder when you have opened a new book, — 
instead of looking at the bird, or looking at the 
book, — as lapse into any of the habits of a man 



Talk 35 

who pretends to talk to one person while he is 
listening to another, or watching another, or won- 
dering about another. If you really want to hear 
what Jo Gresham is saying to Alice Faulcon- 
bridge, when they are standing next to you in the 
dance, say so to Will Withers, who is trying to 
talk with you. You can say pleasantly, " Mr. 
Withers, I want very much to overhear what Mr. 
Gresham is saying, and if you will keep still a 
minute, I think I can." Then Will Withers will 
know what to do. You will not be preoccupied, 
and perhaps you may be able to hear something 
you were not meant to know. 

At this you are disgusted. You throw down 
the book at once, and say you will not read any 
more. You cannot think why this hateful man 
supposes that you would do anything so mean. 

Then why do you let Will Withers suppose so? 
All he can tell is what you show him. If you will 
listen while he speaks, so as to answer intelligently, 
and will then speak to him as if there was no other 
persons in the room, he will know fast enough that 
you are talking to him. But if you just say " yes," 
and " no," and "indeed," and "certainly," in that 
flabby, languid way in which some boys and girls 
I know pretend to talk sometimes, he will think 
that you are engaged in thinking of somebody 
else, or something else, — unless, indeed, he sup- 
poses that you are not thinking of anything, and 
that you hardly know what thinking is. 

It is just as bad, when you are talking to 



36 How to do It 

another girl, or another girl's mother, if you take 
to watching her hair, or the way she trimmed her 
frock, or anything else about her, instead of 
watching what she is saying as if that were really 
what you and she are talking for. I could name 
to you young women who seem to go into society 
for the purpose of studying the milliner's business. 
It is a very good business, and a very proper busi- 
ness to study in the right place. I know some 
very good girls who would be much improved, and 
whose husbands would be a great deal happier, if 
they would study it to more purpose than they do. 
But do not study it while you are talking. No, — 
not if the Empress Eugenie herself should be 
talking to you. 1 Suppose, when General Dix has 
presented you and mamma, the Empress should 
see you in the crowd afterwards, and should send 
that stiff-looking old gentleman in a court dress 
across the room, to ask you to come and talk to 
her, and should say to you, " Mademoiselle, est-ce 
que Ton permet aux jeunes filles Americaines se 
promener'a cheval sans cavalier? " Do you look 
her frankly in the face while she speaks, and when 
she stops, do you answer her as you would answer 
Leslie Goldthwaite if you were coming home from 
berrying. Don't you count those pearls that the 
Empress has tied round her head, nor think how 
you can make a necktie like hers out of that old 
bit of ribbon that you bought in Syracuse. Tell 
her in as good French or as good English as you 
l This was written in 1869, and I leave it in memoriam. 



Talk 37 

can muster, what she asks ; and if, after you have 
answered her lead, she plays again, do you play 
again; and if she plays again, do you play 
again, — till one or other of you takes the trick. 
But do you think of nothing else, while the talk 
goes on, but the subject she has started, and 
of her; do not think of yourself, but address your- 
self to the single business of meeting her inquiry 
as well as you can. Then, if it becomes proper for 
you to ask her a question, you may. But remem- 
ber that conversation is what you are there for, — 
not the study of millinery, or fashion, or jewelry, or 
politics. 

Why, I have known men who, while they were 
smirking, and smiling, and telling other lies to 
their partners, were keeping the calendar of the 
whole room, — knew who was dancing with whom, 
and who was looking at pictures, and that Brown 
had sent up to the lady of the house to tell her 
that supper was served, and that she was just look- 
ing for her husband that he might offer Mrs. 
Grant his arm and take her downstairs. But do 
you think their partners liked to be treated so? Do 
you think their partners were worms, who liked to 
be trampled upon? Do you think they were 
pachydermatous coleoptera of the dor tribe, who 
had just fallen from red-oak trees, and did not 
know that they were trampled upon? You are 
wholly mistaken. Those partners were of flesh 
and blood, like you, — of the same blood with 
you, cousins-german of yours on the Anglo-Saxon 



38 How to do It 

side, — and they felt just as badly as you would 
feel if anybody talked to you while he was think- 
ing of the other side of the room. 

And I know a man who is, it is true, one of the 
most noble and unselfish of men, but who had made 
troops of friends long before people had found 
that out. Long before he had made his present 
fame, he had found these troops of friends. When 
he was a green, uncouth, unlicked cub of a boy, 
like you, Stephen, he had made them. And do 
you ask how? He had made them by listening 
with all his might. Whoever sailed down on him 
at an evening party and engaged him — though 
it were the most weary of odd old ladies — was 
sure, while they were together, of her victim. He 
would look her right in the eye, would take in her 
every shrug and half-whisper, would enter into all 
her joys and terrors and hopes, would help her by 
his sympathy to find out what the trouble was, 
and, when it was his turn to answer, he would 
answer like her own son. Do you wonder that all 
the old ladies loved him? And it was no special 
court to old ladies. He talked so to school-boys, 
and to shy people who had just poked their heads 
out of their shells, and to all the awkward people, 
and to all the gay and easy people. And so he 
compelled them, by his magnetism, to talk so to 
him. That was the way he made his first friends, 
— and that was the way, I think, that he deserved 
them. 

Did you notice how badly I violated this rule 



Talk 39 

when Dr. Ollapod talked to me of the Gorges 
land-grants, at Mrs. Pollexfen's? I got very badly 
punished, and I deserved what I got, for I had be- 
haved very ill. I ought not to have known what 
Edmeston said, or what Will Hackmatack said. I 
ought to have been listening, and learning about 
the Lords sitting in Equity. Only the next day 
Dr. Ollapod left town without calling on me, he 
was so much displeased. And when, the next 
week, I was lecturing in Naguadavick, and the 
mayor of the town asked me a very simple ques- 
tion about the titles in the third range, I knew 
nothing about it and was disgraced. So much for 
being rude, and not attending to the man who 
was talking to me. 

Now do not tell me that you cannot attend to 
stupid people, or long-winded people, or vulgar 
people. You can attend to anybody, if you will 
remember who he is. How do you suppose that 
Horace Felltham attends to these old ladies, and 
these shy boys? Why, he remembers that they 
are all of the blood-royal. To speak very seri- 
ously, he remembers whose children they are, — 
who is their Father. And that is worth remem- 
bering. It is not of much consequence, when you 
think of that, who made their clothes, or what sort 
of grammar they speak in. This rule of talk, in- 
deed, leads to our next rule, which, as I said of 
the others, is as essential in conversation as it is in 
war, in business, in criticism, or in any other affairs 
of men. It is based on the principle of rightly 



40 How to do It 

honoring all men. For talk, it may be stated 
thus: — 

Never underrate your Interlocutor. 

In the conceit of early life, talking to a man of 
thrice my age, and of immense experience, I said, 
a little too flippantly, " Was it not the King of 
Wiirtemberg whose people declined a constitution 
when he had offered it to them?" 

" Yes," said my friend, " the King told me the 
story himself." 

Observe what a rebuke this would have been to 
me, had I presumed to tell him the fact which he 
knew ten times as accurately as I. I was just 
saved from sinking into the earth by having 
couched my statement in the form of a question. 
The truth is, that we are all dealing with angels 
unawares, and we had best make up our minds to 
that, early in our interviews. One of the first of 
preachers 1 once laid down the law of preaching 
thus: " Preach as if you were preaching to arch- 
angels." This means, " Say the very best thing 
you know, and never condescend to your audi- 
ence." And I once heard Mr. William Hunt, who 
is one of the first artists, say to a class of teachers : 
" I shall not try to adapt myself to your various 
lines of teaching. I will tell you the best things I 
know, and you may make the adaptations." If 
you will boldly try the experiment of entering, 
with anybody you have to talk with, on the thing 

1 John Weiss. 



Talk 41 

which at the moment interests you most, you will 
find out that other people's hearts are much like 
your heart, other people's experiences much like 
yours, and even, my dear Justin, that some other 
people know as much as you know. In short, 
never talk down to people; but talk to them from 
your best thought and your best feeling, without 
trying for it on the one hand, but without rejecting 
it on the other. 

You will be amazed, every time you try this ex- 
periment, to find how often the man or the woman 
whom you first happen to speak to is the very 
person who can tell you just what you want to 
know. My friend Ingham, who is a working min- 
ister in a large town, says that when he comes from 
a house where everything is in a tangle, and all 
wrong, he knows no way of righting things but by 
telling the whole story, without the names, in the 
next house he happens to call at in his afternoon 
walk. He says that if the Windermeres are all in 
tears because little Polly lost their grandmother's 
miniature when she was out picking blueberries, 
and if he tells of their loss at the Ashteroths' where 
he calls next, it will be sure that the daughter of 
the gardener of the Ashteroths will have found the 
picture of the Windermeres. Remember what I 
have taught you, — that conversation is the provi- 
dential arrangement for the relief of ignorance. 
Only, as in all medicine, the patient must admit 
that he is ill, or he can never be cured. It is only 
in " Patronage," — which I am so sorry you boys 



42 How to do It 

and girls will not read, — and in other poorer 
novels, that the leech cures, at a distance, patients 
who say they need no physician. Find out your 
ignorance, first; admit it frankly, second ; be ready 
to recognize with true honor the next man you 
meet, third ; and then, presto ! — although it were 
needed that the floor of the parlor should open, 
and a little black-bearded Merlin be shot up like 
Jack in a box, as you saw in Humpty-Dumpty, — 
the right person, who knows the right thing, will 
appear, and your ignorance will be solved. 

What happened to me last week when I was try- 
ing to find the history of Yankee Doodle? Did 
it come to me without my asking? Not a bit of 
it. Nothing that was true came without my ask- 
ing. Without my asking, there came that stuff 
you saw in the newspapers, which said Yankee 
Doodle was a Spanish air. That was not true. 
This was the way I found out what was true. I 
confessed my ignorance; and, as Lewis at Bel- 
lombre said of that ill-mannered Power, I had a 
great deal to confess. What I knew was, that in 
" American Anecdotes " an anonymous writer 
said a friend of his had seen the air among some 
Roundhead songs in the collection of a friend of 
his at Cheltenham, and that this air was the basis 
of Yankee Doodle. What was more, there was 
the old air printed. But then that story was good 
for nothing till you could prove it. A Methodist 
minister came to Jeremiah Mason, and said, " I 
have seen an angel from heaven who told me that 



Talk 43 

your client was innocent." " Yes," said Mr. Mason, 
" and did he tell you how to prove it? " Unfortu- 
nately, in the dear old " American Anecdotes," 
there was not the name of any person, from one 
cover to the other, who would be responsible for 
one syllable of its charming stories. So there I 
was ! And I went through library after library 
looking for that Roundhead song, and I could 
not find it. But when the time came that it was 
necessary I should know, I confessed ignorance. 
Well, after that, the first man I spoke to said, 
" No, I don't know anything about it. It is not in 
my line. But our old friend Watson knew some- 
thing about it, or said he did." " Who is Watson? " 
said I. " Oh, he 's dead ten years ago. But 
there 's a letter by him in the 4 Historical Proceed- 
ings,' which tells what he knew." So, indeed, there 
was a letter by Watson. Oddly enough, it left out 
all that was of direct importance ; but it left in this 
statement, that he, an authentic person, wrote the 
dear old " American Anecdote " story. That was 
something. So then I gratefully confessed igno- 
rance again, and again, and again. And I have 
many friends, so that there were many brave men, 
and many fair women, who were extending the 
various tentacula of their feeling processes into the 
different realms of the known and the unknown, to 
find that lost scrap of a Roundhead song for me. 
And so, at last, it was a girl — as old, say, as the 
youngest who will struggle as far as this page in 
the Cleveland High School — who said, "Why, 



44 How to do It 

there is something about it in that funny English 
book, * Gleanings for the Curious/ I found in the 
Boston Library." And sure enough, in an article 
perfectly worthless in itself, there were the two 
words which named the printed collection of music 
which the other people had forgotten to name. 
These three books were each useless alone; but, 
when brought together, they established a fact 
It took three people in talk to bring the three 
books together. And if I had been such a fool 
that I could not confess ignorance, or such another 
fool as to have distrusted the people I met with, 
I should never have had the pleasure of my 
discovery. 

Now I must not go into any more such stories 
as this, because you will say I am violating the 
sixth great rule of talk, which is — 

Be Short. 

And, besides, you must know that "they say" 
(whoever they may be) that " young folks " like you 
skip such explanations, and hurry on to the stories. 
I do not believe a word of that, but I obey. 

I know one saint. We will call her Agatha. I 
used to think she could be painted for Mary 
Mother, her face is so passionless and pure and 
good. I used to want to make her wrap a blue 
cloth round her head, as if she were in a picture I 
have a print of, and then, if we could only find 
the painter who was as pure and good as she, she 
should be painted as Mary Mother. Well, this 



Talk 45 

sweet saint has done lovely things in life, and 
will do more, till she dies. And the people she 
deals with do many more than she. For her truth 
and gentleness and loveliness pass into them, and 
inspire them, and then, with the light and life 
they gain from her, they can do what, with her 
light and life, she cannot do. For she herself, like 
all of us, has her limitations. And I suppose the 
one reason why, with such serenity and energy 
and long-suffering and unselfishness as hers, she 
does not succeed better in her own person is that 
she does not know how to " be short." We cannot 
all be or do all things. First boy in Latin, you 
may translate that sentence back into Latin, and 
see how much better it sounds there than in Eng- 
lish. Then send your version to the Letter-Box. 
For instance, it may be Agatha's duty to come 
and tell me that — what shall we have it? — say 
that dinner is ready. Now really the best way 
but one to say that is, " Dinner is ready, sir." The 
best way is, " Dinner, sir; " for this age, observe, 
loves to omit the verb. Let it. But really if St. 
Agatha, of whom I speak, — the second of that 
name, and of the Protestant, not the Roman Can- 
on, — had this to say, she would say: "I am so 
glad to see you ! I do not want to take your time, 
I am sure, you have so many things to do, and 
you are so good to everybody, but I knew you 
would let me tell you this. I was coming up- 
stairs, and I saw your cook, Florence, you know. 
I always knew her ; she used to live at Mrs. Cra- 



46 How to do It 

dock's before she started on her journey ; and her 
sister lived with that friend of mine that I visited 
the summer Willie was so sick with the mumps, 
and she was so kind to him. She was a beautiful 
woman ; her husband would be away all the day, 
and when he came home, she would have a piece 
of mince-pie for him, and his slippers warmed and 
in front of the fire for him ; and, when he was in 
Cayenne, he died, and they brought his body home 
in a ship Frederic Marsters was the captain of. It 
was there that I met Florence's sister — not so 
pretty as Florence, but I think a nice girl. She is 
married now and lives at Ashland, and has two 
nice children, a boy and a girl. They are all com- 
ing to see us at Thanksgiving. I was so glad to see 
that Florence was with you, and I did not know it 
when I came in, and when I met her in the entry 
I was very much surprised, and she saw I was 
coming in here, and she said, ' Please, will you tell 
him that dinner is ready? ' " 

Now it is not simply, you see, that, while an 
announcement of that nature goes on, the mutton 
grows cold, your wife grows tired, the children 
grow cross, and that the subjugation of the world 
in general is set back, so far as you are all con- 
cerned, a perceptible space of time on The Great 
Dial. But the tale itself has a wearing and weary- 
ing perplexity about it. At the end you doubt if 
it is your dinner that is ready, or Fred Marster's, 
or Florence's, or nobody's. Whether there is any 
real dinner, you doubt. For want of a vigorous 



Talk 47 

nominative case, firmly governing the verb, whether 
that verb is seen or not, or because this firm nomi- 
native is masked and disguised behind clouds of 
drapery and other rubbish, the best of stories, thus 
told, loses all life, interest, and power. 

Leave out, then, resolutely. First, omit " Speak- 
ing of hides," or "That reminds me of," or "What 
you say suggests," or " You make me think of," 
or any such introductions. Of course you remem- 
ber what you are saying. You could not say it if 
you did not remember it. It is to be hoped, too, 
that you are thinking of what you are saying. If 
you are not, you will not help the matter by say- 
ing you are, no matter if the conversation do have 
firm and sharp edges. Conversation is not an 
essay. It has a right to many large letters, and 
many new paragraphs. That is what makes it so 
much more interesting than long, close paragraphs 
like this, which the printers hate as much as I do, 
and which they call solid matter y as if to indicate 
that, in proportion, such paragraphs are apt to lack 
the light, ethereal spirit of all life. 

Second, in conversation, you need not give 
authorities, if it be only clear that you are not pre- 
tending originality. Do not say, as dear Pember- 
ton used to, " I have a book at home, which I 
bought at the sale of Byles's books, in which there 
is an account of Parry's first voyage, and an expla- 
nation of the red snow, which shows that the red 
snow is," &c, &c, &c. Instead of this say, " Red 
snow is," &c, &c, &c. Nobody will think you are 



48 How to do It 

producing this as a discovery of your own. When 
the authority is asked for, there will be a fit time 
for you to tell. 

Third, never explain, unless for extreme neces- 
sity, who people are. Let them come in as they 
do at the play, when you have no play-bill. If 
what you say is otherwise intelligible, the hearers 
will find out, if it is necessary y as perhaps it may 
not be. Go back, if you please, to my account of 
Agatha, and see how much sooner we should all 
have come to dinner if she had not tried to explain 
about all these people. The truth is, you cannot 
explain about them. You are led in farther and 
farther. Frank wants to say, " George went to 
the Stereopticon yesterday." Instead of that he 
says, " A fellow at our school named George, a 
brother of Tom Tileston who goes to the Dwight, 
and is in Miss Somerby's room, — not the Miss 
Somerby that has the class in the Sunday-school, 

— she 's at the Brimmer School, — but her sister," 

— and already poor Frank is far from George, and 
far from the Stereopticon, and, as I observe, is 
wandering farther and farther. He began with 
George, but, George having suggested Tom and 
Miss Somerby, by the same law of thought each 
of them would have suggested two others. Poor 
Frank, who was quite master of his one theme, 
George, finds unawares that he is dealing with 
two, gets flurried, but plunges on, only to find, in 
his remembering, that these two have doubled into 
four, and then, conscious that in an instant they 



Talk 49 

will be eight, and, which is worse, eight themes or 
subjects on which he is not prepared to speak at 
all, probably wishes he had never begun. It is 
certain that every one else wishes it, whether he 
does or not. You need not explain. People of 
sense understand something. 

Do you remember the illustration of repartee in 
Miss Edgeworth? It is this: — 

Mr. Pope, who was crooked and cross, was talk- 
ing with a young officer. The officer said he 
thought that in a certain sentence an interroga- 
tion-mark was needed. 

" Do you know what an interrogation mark is?" 
snarled out the crooked, cross little man. 

" It is a crooked little thing that asks questions," 
said the young man. 

And he shut up Mr. Pope for that day. 

But you can see that he would not have shut 
up Mr. Pope at all if he had had to introduce his 
answer and explain it from point to point. If he 
had said, " Do you really suppose I do not 
know? Why, really, as long ago as when I was 
at the Charter House School, old William Watrous, 
who was master there then, — he had been at the 
school himself, when he and Ezekiel Cheever were 
boys, — told me that a point of interrogation was 
a little crooked thing that asks questions." 

The repartee would have lost a good deal of its 
force, if this unknown young officer had not 
learned (i) not to introduce his remarks ; (2) not to 
give authorities ; and (3) not to explain who people 



So How to do It 

are. These are, perhaps, enough instances in de- 
tail, though they do not in the least describe all the 
dangers that surround you. Speaking more gen- 
erally, avoid parentheses as you would poison ; and 
more generally yet, as I said at first, Be SHORT. 
These six rules must suffice for the present. 
Observe, I am only speaking of methods. I take 
it for granted that you are not spiteful, hateful, or 
wicked otherwise. I do not tell you, therefore, 
never to talk scandal, because I hope you do not 
need to learn that. I do not tell you never to be 
sly, or mean, in talk. If you need to be told that, 
you are beyond such training as we can give here. 
Study well, and practise daily these six rules, and 
then you will be prepared for our next instruc- 
tions, — which require attention to these rules, as 
all Life does, — when we shall consider — 

How TO WRITE. 



CHAPTER IV 

HOW TO WRITE 

It is supposed that you have learned your letters, 
and how to make them. It is supposed that you 
have written the school copies, from 

<JZ&# ana iJ&ma&cMA aim a/ <J&iJ. 

down to 

Aame* ana Acaiact ate me Aetf c/ Acicad&i. 



How to Write 51 

It is supposed that you can mind your p's and 
q's, and, as Harriet Byron said of Charles Grandi- 
son, in the romance which your great-grand- 
mother knew by heart, " that you can spell well." 
Observe the advance of the times, dear Stephen. 
That a gentleman should spell well was the only 
literary requisition which the accomplished lady 
of his love made upon him a hundred years ago. 1 
And you, if you go to Mrs. Vandermeyer's party 
to-night, will be asked by the fair Marcia what is 
your opinion as to the origin of the myth of 
Ceres ! 

These things are supposed. It is also supposed 
that you have, at heart and in practice, the essen- 
tial rules which have been unfolded in Chapters II. 
and III. As has been already said, these are as 
necessary in one duty of life as in another, — in 
writing a President's message as in finding your 
way by a spotted trail from Albany to Tamworth. 

These things being supposed, we will now con- 
sider the special needs for writing, as a gentleman 
writes, or a lady, in the English language, which 
is, fortunately for us, the best language of them 
all. 

I will tell you, first, the first lesson I learned 
about it ; for it was the best, and was central. My 
first undertaking of importance in this line was 
made when I was seven years old. There was a 
new theatre, and a prize of a hundred dollars was 
offered for an ode to be recited at the opening, — 

1 It was a hundred then. We have changed all that. 1899. 



52 How to do It 

or perhaps it was only at the opening of the 
season. Our school was hard by the theatre, and 
as we boys were generally short of spending- 
money, we conceived the idea of competing for 
this prize. You can see that a hundred dollars 
would have gone a good way in barley-candy and 
blood-alleys, — which last are things unknown, 
perhaps to Young America to-day. So we reso- 
lutely addressed ourselves to writing for the ode. 
I was soon snagged, and found the difficulties 
greater than I had thought. I consulted one who 
has through life been Nestor and Mentor to me, — 
(Second class in Greek, — Wilkins, who was Nes- 
tor? — Right; go up. Third class in French, — 
Miss Clara, who was Mentor? — Right; sit down), 
— and he replied by this remark, which I beg you 
to ponder inwardly, and always act upon : — 

" Edward," said he, " whenever I am going to 
write anything, I rind it best to think first what I 
am going to say." 

In the instruction thus conveyed is a lesson 
which nine writers out of ten have never learned. 
Even the people who write leading articles for the 
newspapers do not, half the time, know what they 
are going to say when they begin. And I have 
heard many a sermon which was evidently written 
by a man who, when he began, only knew what 
his first " head " was to be. The sermon was a 
sort of riddle to himself when he started, and he 
was curious as to how it would come out. I re- 
member a very worthy gentleman who sometimes 



How to Write 53 

spoke to the Sunday-school when I was a boy. 
He would begin without the slightest idea of what 
he was going to say, but he was sure that the end 
of the first sentence would help him to the second. 
This is an example : — 

"My dear young friends, I do not know that I 
have anything to say to you, but I am very much 
obliged to your teachers for asking me to address 
you this beautiful morning. — The morning is so 
beautiful, after the refreshment of the night, that as 
I walked to church, and looked around and breathed 
the fresh air, I felt more than ever what a privilege 
it is to live in so wonderful a world. — For the 
world, dear children, has been all contrived and set 
in order for us by a Power so much higher than 
our own, that we might enjoy our own lives, and 
live for the happiness and good of our brothers 
and our sisters. — Our brothers and our sisters 
they are indeed, though some of them are in dis- 
tant lands, and beneath other skies, and parted 
from us by the broad oceans. — These oceans, 
indeed, do not so much divide the world as they 
unite it. They make it one. The winds which 
blow over them, and the currents which move 
their waters, — all are ruled by a higher law, that 
they may contribute to commerce and to the good 
of man. — And man, my dear children," &c, &c, &c. 

You see there is no end to it. It is a sort of 
capping verses with yourself, where you take up 
the last word, or the last idea of one sentence, and 
begin the next with it, quite indifferent where you 



54 How to do It 

come out, if you only " occupy the time " that is 
appointed. It is very easy for you, but, my dear 
friends, it is very hard for those who read and who 
listen ! 

The vice goes so far, indeed, that you may di- 
vide literature into two great classes of books. 
The smaller class of the two consists of the books 
written by people who had something to say. They 
had in life learned something, or seen something, 
or done something, which they really wanted 
and needed to tell to other people. They told 
it. And their writings make, perhaps, a twen- 
tieth part of the printed literature of the world. 
It is the part which contains all that is worth 
reading. The other nineteen twentieths make 
up the other class. The people have written just 
as you wrote at school when Miss Winstanley told 
you to bring in your compositions on " Duty Per- 
formed." You had very little to say about " Duty 
Performed." But Miss Winstanley expected three 
pages. And she got them, — such as they were. 

Our first rule is, then, — 

Know what you want to say. 
The second rule is, — 

Say it. 
That is, do not begin by saying something else, 
which you think will lead up to what you want to 
say. I remember, when they tried to teach me to 
sing, they told me to " think of eight and sing 
seven." That may be a very good rule for singing, 



How to Write 55 

but it is not a good rule for talking, or writing, or 
any of the other things that I have to do. I advise 
you to say the thing you want to say. When I 
began to preach, another of my Nestors said to 
me, " Edward, I give you one piece of advice. 
When you have written your sermon, leave off the 
introduction and leave off the conclusion. The 
introduction seems to me always written to show 
that the minister can preach two sermons on one 
text. Leave that off, then, and it will do for an- 
other Sunday. The conclusion is written to apply 
to the congregation the doctrine of the sermon. 
But, if your hearers are such fools that they can- 
not apply the doctrine to themselves, nothing you 
can say will help them." In this advice was much 
wisdom. It consists, you see, in advising to begin 
at the beginning, and to stop when you have done. 
Thirdly, and always, — 

Use your own Language. 

I mean the language you are accustomed to use in 
daily life. David did much better with his sling 
than he would have done with Saul's sword and 
spear. And Hatty Fielding told me, only last week, 
that she was very sorry she wore her cousin's 
pretty brooch to an evening dance, though Fanny 
had really forced it on her. Hatty said, like a 
sensible girl as she is, that it made her nervous all 
the time. She felt as if she were sailing under 
false colors. If your every-day language is not fit 
for a letter or for print, it is not fit for talk. And 



56 How to do It 

if, by any series of joking or fun, at school or at 
home, you have got into the habit of using slang 
in talk, which is not fit for print, why, the sooner 
you get out of it the better. Remember that the 
very highest compliment paid to anything printed 
is paid when a person, hearing it read aloud, thinks 
it is the remark of the reader made in conversation. 
Both writer and reader then receive the highest 
possible praise. 

It is sad enough to see how often this rule is 
violated. There are fashions of writing. Mr. 
Dickens, in his wonderful use of exaggerated lan- 
guage, introduced one. And now you can hardly 
read the court report in a village paper but you 
find that the ill-bred boy who makes up what he calls 
its " locals " thinks it is funny to write in such a 
style as this : — 

" An unfortunate individual who answered to the 
somewhat well-worn sobriquet of Jones, and ap- 
peared to have been trying some experiments as 
to the comparative density of his own skull and 
the materials of the sidewalk, made an involuntary 
appearance before Mr. Justice Smith." 

Now the little fool who writes this does not 
think of imitating Dickens. He is only imitating 
another fool, who was imitating another, who was 
imitating another, — who, through a score of such 
imitations, got the idea of this burlesque exaggera- 
tion from some of Mr. Dickens's earlier writings 
of thirty years ago. It was very funny when Mr. 
Dickens originated it. And almost always, when 



How to Write 57 

he used it, it was very funny. But it is not in the 
least funny when these other people use it, to 
whom it is not natural, and to whom it does not 
come easily. Just as this boy says " sobriquet," 
without knowing at all what the word means, 
merely because he has read it in another news- 
paper, everybody, in this vein, gets entrapped 
into using words with the wrong senses, in the 
wrong places, and making himself ridiculous. 

Now it happens, by good luck, that I have, on 
the table here, a pretty file of eleven compositions, 
which Miss Winstanley has sent me, which the 
girls in her first class wrote, on the subject I have 
already named. The whole subject, as she gave it 
out was, " Duty performed is a Rainbow in the 
Soul." I think, myself, that the subject was a bad 
one, and that Miss Winstanley would have done 
better had she given them a choice from two 
familiar subjects, of which they had lately seen 
something or read something. When young people 
have to do a thing, it always helps them to give 
them a choice between two ways of doing it. 
However, Miss Winstanley gave them this subject. 
It made a good deal of growling in the school, but, 
when the time came, of course the girls buckled 
down to the work, and, as I said before, the three 
pages wrote themselves, or were written somehow 
or other. 

Now I am not going to inflict on you all these 
eleven compositions. But there are three of them 
which, as it happens, illustrate quite distinctly the 



58 How to do It 

three errors against which I have been warning 
you. I will copy a little scrap from each of them. 
First, here is Pauline's. She wrote without any 
idea, when she began, of what she was going to say. 

"Duty performed is a Rainbow in the Soul. 

" A great many people ask the question, ' What is 
duty?' and there has been a great deal written upon 
the subject, and many opinions have been expressed in a 
variety of ways. People have different ideas upon it, and 
some of them think one thing and some another. And 
some have very strong views, and very decided about 
it. But these are not always to be the most admired, for 
often those who are so loud about a thing are not the 
ones who know the most upon a subject. Yet it is all 
very important, and many things should be done ; and, 
when they are done, we are all embowered in ecstasy." 

That is enough of poor Pauline's. And, to tell 
the truth, she was as much ashamed when she 
had come out to this " ecstasy," in first writing 
what she called " the plaguy thing," as she is now 
she reads it from the print. But she began that 
sentence, just as she began the whole, with no 
idea how it was to end. Then she got aground. 
She had said, "it is all very important;" and 
she did not know that it was better to stop there, 
if she had nothing else to say, so, after waiting a 
good while, knowing that they must all go to bed 
at nine, she added, " and many things should be 
done." Even then, she did not see that the best 
thing she could do was to put a full stop to the 



How to Write 59 

sentence. She watched the other girls, who were 
going well down their second pages, while she had 
not turned the leaf, and so, in real agony, she 
added this absurd "when they are done, we are 
all embowered in ecstasy." The next morning 
they had to copy the " compositions." She knew 
what stuff this was, just as well as you and I 
do, but it took up twenty good lines, and she 
could not afford, she thought, to leave it out. 
Indeed, I am sorry to say, none of her "com- 
position " was any better. She did not know 
what she wanted to say, when she had done, any 
better than when she began. 

Pauline is the same Pauline who wanted to 
draw in monochromatic drawing. 

Here is the beginning of Sybil's. She is the 
girl who refused the sponge-cake when Dr. Throop 
offered it to her. She had an idea that an intro- 
duction helped along, — and this is her introduc- 
tion. 

" Duty performed is a Rainbow in the Soul. 

" 1 went out at sunset to consider this subject, and 
beheld how the departing orb was scattering his beams 
over the mountains. Every blade of grass was gather- 
ing in some rays of beauty, every tree was glittering in 
the majesty of parting day. 

"I said, What is life? — What is duty? I saw the 
world folding itself up to rest. The little flowers, the 
tired sheep, were turning to their fold. So the sun went 
down. He had done his duty, along with the rest." 



60 How to do It 

And so we got round to "Duty performed," 
and, the introduction well over, like the tuning 
of an orchestra, the business of the piece began. 
That little slip about the flowers going into their 
folds was one which Sybil afterwards defended. 
She said it meant that they folded themselves up. 
But it was an oversight when she wrote it; she 
forgot the flowers, and was thinking of the 
sheep. 

Now I think you will all agree with me that 
the whole composition would have been better 
without this introduction. 

Sarah Clavers had a genuine idea, which she 
had explained to the other girls much in this way : 
" I know what Miss Winstanley means. She 
means this. When you have had a real hard 
time to do what you know you ought to do, when 
you have made a good deal of fuss about it, — 
as we all did the day we had to go over to Mr. 
Ingham's and beg pardon for disturbing the Sun- 
day-school, — you are so glad it is done that 
everything seems nice and quiet and peaceful, — 
just as, when a thunder-storm is really over, only 
just a few drops falling, there comes a nice still 
minute or two with a rainbow across the sky. 
That 's what Miss Winstanley means, and that 's 
what I am going to say." 

Now really, if Sarah had said that, without 
making the sentence breathlessly long, it would 
have been a very decent " composition " for such 
a subject. But when poor Sarah got her paper 



How to Write 61 

before her, she made two mistakes. First, she 
thought her school-girl talk was not good enough 
to be written down. And, second, she knew that 
long words took up more room than short; so, 
to fill up her three pages, she translated her little 
words into the largest she could think of. It was 
just as Dr. Schweigenthal, when he wanted to 
say, " Jesus was going to Jerusalem," said, " The 
Founder of our religion was proceeding to the 
metropolis of his country." That took three 
times as much room and time, you see. So Sarah 
translated her English into the language of the 
Talkee-talkees ; thus: — 

" Duty performed is a Rainbow in the Soul. 

" It is frequently observed that the complete dis- 
charge of the obligations pressing upon us as moral 
agents is attended with conflict and difficulty. Fre- 
quently, therefore, we address ourselves to the discharge 
of these obligations with some measure of resistance, 
perhaps with obstinacy, and I may add, indeed, with 
unwillingness. I wish I could persuade myself that our 
teacher had forgotten " (Sarah looked on this as a mas- 
terpiece, — a good line of print, which says, as you see, 
really nothing) " the afternoon which was so mortifying 
to all who were concerned, when her appeal to our bet- 
ter selves, and to our educated consciousness of what 
was due to a clergyman, and to the institutions of re- 
ligion, made it necessary for several of the young ladies 
to cross to the village " (Sarah wished she could have 
said metropolis) "and obtain an interview with the 
Rev. Mr. Ingham." 



62 How to do It 

And so the composition goes on. Four full 
pages there are; but you see how they were 
gained, — by a vicious style, wholly false to a 
frank-spoken girl like Sarah. She expanded 
into what fills sixteen lines here what, as she 
expressed it in conversation, fills only seven. 

I hope you all see how one of these faults 
brings on another. Such is the way with all 
faults ; they hunt in couples, or often, indeed, in 
larger company. The moment you leave the simple 
wish to say upon paper the thing you have thought, 
you are given over to all these temptations to 
write things which, if any one else wrote them, 
you would say were absurd, as you say these 
school-girls' " compositions " are. Here is a good 
rule of the real " Nestor " of our time. 1 He is a 
great preacher ; and one day he was speaking of 
the advantage of sometimes preaching an old 
sermon a second time. " You can change the 
arrangement," he said. " You can fill in any 
point in the argument, where you see it is not as 
strong as you proposed. You can add an illus- 
tration, if your statement is difficult to understand. 
Above all, you can 

" Leave out all the Fine Passages." 

I put that in small capitals, for one of our rules. 
For, in nineteen cases out of twenty, the Fine 
Passage that you are so pleased with, when you 
first write it, is better out of sight than in. Re- 

1 Dr. James Walker. 



How to Write 63 

member Whately's great maxim, " Nobody knows 
what good things you leave out." 

Indeed, to the older of the young friends who 
favor me by reading these pages I can give no 
better advice, by the way, than that they read 
" Whately's Rhetoric." Read ten pages a day, 
then turn back, and read them carefully again, 
before you put the book by. You will find it a 
very pleasant book, and it will give you a great 
many hints for clear and simple expression, which 
you are not so likely to find in any other way I 
know. 

Most of you know the difference between Saxon 
words and Latin words in the English language. 
You know there were once two languages in Eng- 
land, — the Norman French, which William the 
Conqueror and his men brought in, and the Saxon 
of the people who were conquered at that time. 
The Norman French was largely composed of 
words of Latin origin. The English language 
has been made up of the slow mixture of these 
two; but the real stock, out of which this deli- 
cious soup is made, is the Saxon, — the Norman 
French should only add the flavor. In some writ- 
ing, it is often necessary to use the words of Latin 
origin. Thus, in most scientific writing, the Latin 
words more nicely express the details of the mean- 
ing needed. But, to use the Latin word where 
you have a good Saxon one is still what it was in 
the times of Wamba and of Cedric, — it is to pre- 
tend you are one of the conquering nobility, when, 



64 How to do It 

in fact, you are one of the free people, who speak, 
and should be proud to speak, not the French, 
but the English tongue. To those of you who 
have even a slight knowledge of French or Latin 
it will be very good fun, and a very good exercise, 
to translate, in some thoroughly bad author, his 
Latin words into English. 

To younger writers, or to those who know only 
English, this may seem too hard a task. It will 
be doing much the same thing, if they will try 
translating from long words into short ones. 

Here is a piece of weak English. It is not bad 
in other regards, but simply weak. 

" Entertaining unlimited confidence in your in- 
telligent and patriotic devotion to the public in- 
terest, and being conscious of no motives on my 
part which are not inseparable from the honor 
and advancement of my country, I hope it may 
be my privilege to deserve and secure, not only 
your cordial co-operation in great public meas- 
ures, but also those relations of mutual confidence 
and regard which it is always so desirable to cul- 
tivate between members of co-ordinate branches 
of the government." 1 

Take that for an exercise in translating into 
shorter words. Strike out the unnecessary words, 
and see if it does not come out stronger. The 
same passage will serve also as an exercise as to 
the use of Latin and Saxon words. Dr. Johnson 

1 From Mr. Franklin Pierce's first message to Congress as Presi- 
dent of the United States. 



How to Write 65 

is generally quoted as the English author who 
uses most Latin words. He uses, I think, ten in 
a hundred. But our Congressmen far exceed him. 
This sentence uses Latin words at the rate of 
thirty-five in a hundred. Try a good many ex- 
periments in translating from long to short, and 
you will be sure that, when you have a fair choice 
between two words, 

A Short Word is better than a long one. 

For instance, I think this sentence would have 
been better if it had been couched in thirty-six 
words instead of eighty-one. I think we should 
have lost nothing of the author's meaning if he 
had said : " I have full trust in you. I am sure 
that I seek only the honor and advance of the 
country. I hope, therefore, that I may earn your 
respect and regard, while we heartily work to- 
gether." 

I am fond of telling the story of the words 
which a distinguished friend of mine 1 used in 
accepting a hard post of duty. He said : — 

" I do not think I am fit for this place. But 
my friends say I am, and I trust them. I shall 
take the place, and, when I am in it, I shall do as 
well as I can." 

It is a very grand sentence. Observe that it 
has not one word which is more than one syllable. 
As it happens, also, every word is Saxon, — there 

1 Rev. Dr. Hosmer, when he accepted the presidency of Antioch 
College. 

5 



66 How to do It 

is not one spurt of Latin. Yet this was a learned 
man, who, if he chose, could have said the whole 
in Latin. But he was one American gentleman 
talking to another American gentleman, and there- 
fore he chose to use the tongue to which they 
both were born. 

We have not space to go into the theory of 
these rules, as far as I should like to. But you 
see the force which a short word has, if you can 
use it, instead of a long one. If you want to say 
"hush," "hush" is a much better word than 
the French " taisez-vousT If you want to say 
"halt," "halt" is much better than the French 
" arretez-vous" The French have, in fact, borrowed 
" halte" from us or from the German, for their 
tactics. For the same reason, you want to prune 
out the unnecessary words from your sentences, 
and even the classes of words which seem put in 
to fill up. If, for instance, you can express your 
idea without an adjective, your sentence is stronger 
and more manly. It is better to say " a saint " 
than " a saintly man." It is better to say " This 
is the truth" than "This is the truthful result." 
Of course an adjective may be absolutely neces- 
sary. But you may often detect extempore speak- 
ers in piling in adjectives, because they have not 
yet hit on the right noun. In writing, this is not 
to be excused. " You have all the time there is," 
when you write, and you do better to sink a 
minute in thinking for one right word, than to 
put in two in its place because you can do so 



How to Write 67 

without loss of time. I hope every school-girl 
knows, what I am sure every school-boy knows, 
Sheridan's saying, that " easy writing is hard 
reading." 

In general, as I said before, other things being 
equal, 

"The fewer Words the better," 

" as it seems to me." " As it seems to me " is the 
quiet way in which Nestor states things. Would 
we were all as careful ! 

There is one adverb or adjective which it is 
almost always safe to leave out in America. It 
is the word " very." I learned that from one of 
the masters of English style. " Strike out your 
'verys,' " said he to me, when I was young. I 
wish I had done so oftener than I have. 

For myself, I like short sentences. This is, 
perhaps, because I have read a good deal of 
modern French, and I think the French gain in 
clearness by the shortness of their sentences. But 
there are great masters of style, — great enough to 
handle long sentences well, — and these men would 
not agree with me. But I will tell you this, that if 
you have a sentence which you do not like, the 
best experiment to try on it is the experiment 
Medea tried on the old goat, when she wanted to 
make him over : — 

Cut it to Pieces. 
What shall I take for illustration ? You will be 
more interested in one of these school-girls' 



68 How to do It 

themes than in an old Congress speech I have 
here marked for copying. Here is the first draft 
of Laura Walter's composition, which happens to 
be tied up in the same red ribbon with the finished 
exercises. I will copy a piece of that, and then 
you shall see, from the corrected " composition," 
what came of it when she cut it to pieces, and 
applied the other rules which we have been 
studying. 

LAURA'S FIRST DRAFT. 
" Duty performed is a Rainbow in the Soul. 

" I cannot conceive, and therefore I cannot attempt 
adequately to consider, the full probable meaning of the 
metaphorical expression with which the present ' subject ' 
concludes, — nor do I suppose it is absolutely necessary 
that I should do so, for expressing the various impres- 
sions which I have formed on the subject, taken as a 
whole, which have occurred to me in such careful med- 
itation as I have been able to give to it, — in natural 
connection with an affecting little incident, which I will 
now, so far as my limited space will permit, proceed, 
however inadequately, to describe. 

" My dear little brother Frankie — as sweet a little 
fellow as ever plagued his sister's life out, or troubled 
the kindest of mothers in her daily duties — was one 
day returning from school, when he met my father hur- 
rying from his office, and was directed by him to proceed 
as quickly as was possible to the post-office, and make 
inquiry there for a letter of a good deal of importance 
which he had reason to expect, or at the least to hope 
for, by the New York mail." 



How to Write 69 

Laura had come as far as this early in the week, 
when bedtime came. The next day she read it 
all, and saw it was sad stuff, and she frankly asked 
herself why. The answer was, that she had really 
been trying to spin out three pages. " Now," said 
Laura to herself, " that is not fair." And she 
finished the piece in a very different way, as you 
shall see. Then she went back over this introduc- 
tion, and struck out the fine passages. Then she 
struck out the long words, and put in short ones. 
Then she saw she could do better yet, — and she 
cut that long introductory sentence to pieces. 
Then she saw that none of it was strictly ne- 
cessary, if she only explained why she gave up 
the rainbow part. And, after all these reductions, 
the first part of the essay which I have copied was 
cut down and changed so that it read thus : — 

" Duty performed is a Rainbow in the Soul. 

" I do not know what is meant by a Rainbow in the 
Soul." 

Then Laura went on thus : — 

" I will try to tell a story of duty performed. My 
brother Frank was sent to the post-office for a letter. 
When he came there, the poor child found a big dog at 
the door of the office, and was afraid to go in. It was 
just the dead part of the day in a country village, when 
even the shops are locked up for an hour, and Frank, 
who is very shy, saw no one whom he could call upon. 
He tried to make Miss Evarts, the post-office clerk, hear ; 
but she was in the back of the office. Frank was fright- 



yo How to do It 

ened, but he meant to do his duty. So he crossed the 
bridge, walked up to the butcher's shop in the other vil- 
lage, — which he knew was open, — spent two pennies 
for a bit of meat, and carried it back to tempt his enemy. 
He waved it in the air, called the dog, and threw it into 
the street. The dog was much more willing to eat the 
meat than to eat Frankie. He left his post. Frank went 
in and tapped on the glass, and Miss Evarts came and 
gave him the letter. Frank came home in triumph, and 
papa said it was a finer piece of duty performed than the 
celebrated sacrifice of Casabianca's would have been, 
had it happened that Casabianca ever made it." 

That is the shortest of these " compositions." 
It is much the best. Miss Winstanley took the 
occasion to tell the girls that, other things being 
equal, a short " composition " is better than a long 
one. A short " composition " which shows thought 
and care is much better than a long one which 
" writes itself." 

I dislike the word " composition," but I use it, 
because it is familiar. I think " essay " or " piece " 
or even " theme " a better word. 

Will you go over Laura's story and see where it 
could be shortened, and what Latin words could 
be changed for better Saxon ones ? 

Will you take care, in writing yourself, never to 
say " commence " or " presume " ? 

In the next chapter we will ask each other 

HOW TO READ. 



How to Read 71 



CHAPTER V 

HOW TO READ 

I. — The Choice of Books 

YOU are not to expect any stories this time. 
There will be very few words about Stephen, or 
Sybil, or Sarah. My business now is rather to 
answer, as well as I can, such questions as young 
people ask who are beginning to have their time 
at their own command, and can make their own 
selection of the books they are to read. I have 
before me, as I write, a handful of letters which 
have been written to the office of The Young 
Folks, asking such questions. And all my intel- 
ligent young friends are asking each other such 
questions, and so ask them of me every day. I 
shall answer these questions by laying down some 
general rules, just as I have done before, but I 
shall try to put you into the way of choosing your 
own books, rather than choosing for you a long, 
defined list of them. 

I believe very thoroughly in courses of reading, 
because I believe in having one book lead to an- 
other. But, after the beginning, these courses for 
different persons will vary very much from each 
other. You all go out to a great picnic, and meet 
together in some pleasant place in the woods, and 
you put down the baskets there, and leave the 



J2 How to do It 

pail with the ice in the shadiest place you can 
find, and cover it up with the blanket. Then you all 
set out in this great forest, which we call Litera- 
ture. But it is only a few of the party who 
choose to start hand in hand along a gravel-path 
there is, which leads straight to the Burgesses' 
well, and probably those few enjoy less and gain 
less from the day's excursion than any of the rest. 
The rest break up into different knots, and go 
some here and some there, as their occasion and 
their genius call them. Some go after flowers, 
some after berries, some after butterflies ; some 
knock the rocks to pieces, some get up where 
there is a fine view, some sit down and copy 
the stumps, some go into water, some make a fire, 
some find a camp of Indians and learn how to 
make baskets. Then they all come back to the 
picnic in good spirits and with good appetites, 
each eager to tell the others what he has seen 
and heard, each having satisfied his own taste and 
genius, and each and all having made vastly more 
out of the day than if they had all held to the 
gravel-path and walked in column to the Bur- 
gesses' well and back again. 

This, you see, is a long parable for the purpose 
of making you remember that there are but few 
books which it is necessary for every intelligent 
boy and girl, man and woman to have read. Of 
those few, I had as lief give the list here. 

First is the Bible, of which not only is an intel- 
ligent knowledge necessary for your healthy growth 



How to Read 73 

in religious life, but, — which is of less conse- 
quence, indeed — it is as necessary for your toler- 
able understanding of the literature, or even sci- 
ence, of a world which for eighteen centuries has 
been under the steady influence of the Bible. 
Around the English version of it, as Mr. Marsh 1 
shows so well, the English language of the last 
three centuries has revolved, as the earth revolves 
around the sun. He means that, although the 
language of one time differs from that of another, 
it is always at about the same distance from the 
language of King James's Bible. 

Second, every one ought to be quite well in- 
formed as to the history of the country in which 
he lives. All of you should know the general 
history of the United States well. You should 
know the history of your own State in more detail, 
and of your own town in the most detail of all. 

Third, an American needs to have a clear 
knowledge of the general features of the history 
of England. 

Now it does not make so much difference how 
you compass this general historical knowledge, if, 
in its main features, you do compass it. When 
Mr. Lincoln went down to Norfolk to see the rebel 
commissioners, Mr. Hunter, on their side, cited, as 
a precedent for the action which he wanted the 
President to pursue, the negotiations between 
Charles the First and his Parliament. Mr. Lin- 

1 Marsh's Lectures on the English Language ; very entertain- 
ing books. 



74 How to do It 

coin's eyes twinkled, and he said: "Upon ques- 
tions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, 
for he is posted upon such things, and I do not 
profess to be. My only distinct recollection of the 
matter is, that Charles lost his head." Now you 
see it is of no sort of consequence how Mr. Lin- 
coln got his thoroughly sound knowledge of the 
history of England, — in which, by the way, he 
was entirely at home, — and he had a perfect 
right to pay the compliment he did to Mr. Sew- 
ard. But it was of great importance to him that 
he should not be haunted with the fear that the 
other man did know, really, of some important 
piece of negotiation of which he was ignorant. It 
was important to him to know that, so that he 
might be sure that his joke was — as it was — 
exactly the fitting answer. 

Fourth, it is necessary that every intelligent 
American or Englishman should have read care- 
fully most of Shakespeare's plays. Most people 
would have named them before the history, but I 
do not. I do not care, however, how early you 
read them in life, and, as we shall see, they will be 
among your best guides for the history of England. 

Lastly, it is a disgrace to read even the news- 
paper without knowing where the places are 
which are spoken of. You need, therefore, the 
very best atlas you can provide yourself with. 
The atlas you had when you studied geography 
at school is better than none. But if you can 
compass any more precise and full, so much the 



How to Read j$ 

better. Colton's American Atlas is good. The 
large cheap maps, published two on one roller by- 
Lloyd, are good ; if you can give but five dollars 
for your maps, perhaps this is the best investment. 
Mr. Fay's beautiful atlas costs but three and a 
half dollars. For the other hemisphere, Black's 
Atlas is good. Rogers's, published in Edinburgh, 
is very complete in its American maps. Stieler's 
is cheap and reliable. 

When people talk of the " books which no gen- 
tleman's library should be without," the list may 
be boiled down, I think — if in any stress we 
should be reduced to the bread-and-water diet — 
to such books as will cover these five fundamental 
necessities. If you cannot buy the Bible, the 
agent of the County Bible Society will give you 
one. You can buy the whole of Shakespeare for 
fifty cents in Dicks's edition. And, within two 
miles of the place where you live, there are books 
enough for all the historical study I have pre- 
scribed. So, in what I now go on to say, I shall 
take it for granted that we have all of us made 
thus much preparation, or can make it. These are 
the central stores of the picnic, which we can fall 
back upon, after our explorations in our various 
lines of literature. 

Now for our several courses of reading. How 
am I to know what are your several tastes, or the 
several lines of your genius? Here are, as I learn 
from Mr. Osgood, some seventy-six thousand five 
hundred and forty-three Young Folks, be the same 



y6 How to do It 

more or less, who are reading this paper. How 
am I to tell what are their seventy-six thousand 
five hundred and forty-three tastes, dispositions, 
or lines of genius? I cannot tell. Perhaps they 
could not tell themselves, not being skilled in self- 
analysis; and it is by no means necessary that 
they should be able to tell. Perhaps we can set 
down on paper what will be much better, the rules 
or the system by which each of them may read 
well in the line of his own genius, and so find out 
before he has done with this life, what the line of 
that genius is, as far as there is any occasion. 

DO NOT TRY TO READ EVERYTHING. 

That is the first rule. Do not think you must 
be a Universal Genius. Do not " read all Re- 
views," as an old code I had bade young men do. 
And give up, as early as you can, the passion, 
with which all young people naturally begin, of 
" keeping up with the literature of the time." 
As for the literature of the time, if one were to 
adopt any extreme rule, Mr. Emerson's would be 
the better of the two possible extremes. He says 
it is wise to read no book till it has been printed 
a year; that, before the year is well over, many 
of those books drift out of sight, which just now 
all the newspapers are telling you to read. But 
then, seriously, I do not suppose he acts on that 
rule himself. Nor need you and I. Only, we 
will not try to read them all. 

Here I must warn my young friend Jamie not 



How to Read yj 

to go on talking about renouncing " nineteenth 
century trash." 

It will not do to use such words about a century 
in which have written Goethe, Fichte, Cuvier, 
Schleiermacher, Martineau, Scott, Tennyson, 
Thackeray, Browning, and Dickens, not to men- 
tion a hundred others whom Jamie likes to read 
as much as I do. 1 

No. We will trust to conversation with the 
others, who have had their different paths in this 
picnic party of ours, to learn from them just the 
brightest and best things that they have seen and 
heard. And we will try to be able to tell them, 
simply and truly, the best things we find on our 
own paths. Now, for selecting the path, what 
shall we do, — since one cannot in one little life 
attempt them all? 

You can select for yourself, if you will only 
keep a cool head, and have your eyes open. First 
of all, remember that what you want from books 
is the information in them, and the stimulus they 
give to you, and the amusement for your recreation. 
You do not read for the poor pleasure of saying 
you have read them. You are reading for the 
subject, much more than for the particular book, 
and if you find that you have exhausted all the 
book has on your subject, then you are to leave 
that book, whether you have read it through or 
not. In some cases you read because the author's 
own mind is worth knowing ; and then the more 

1 Written, observe, in 1869. 



yS How to do It 

you read the better you know him. But these 
cases do not affect the rule. You read for what is 
in the books, not that you may mark such a book 
off from a " course of reading," or say at the next 
meeting of the " Philogabblian Society " that you 
"have just been reading Kant" or "Godwin." 
What is the subject, then, which you want to 
read upon? 

Half the boys and girls who read this have 
been so well trained that they know. They know 
what they want to know. One is sure that she 
wants to know more about Mary Queen of Scots ; 
another, that he wants to know more about fly- 
fishing; another, that she wants to know more 
about the Egyptian hieroglyphics ; another, that 
he wants to know more about propagating new 
varieties of pansies; another, that she wants to 
know more about " The Ring and the Book ; " 
another, that he wants to know more about the 
" Tenure of Office bill." Happy is this half. To 
know your ignorance is the great first step to 
its relief. To confess it, as has been said before, 
is the second. In a minute I will be ready to 
say what I can to this happy half; but one 
minute first for the less happy half, who know 
they want to read something because it is so nice 
to read a pleasant book, but who do not know 
what that something is. They come to us, as 
their ancestors came to a relative of mine who 
was a librarian of a town library 1 sixty years ago : 

1 In Dorchester, Mass. 



How to Read 79 

"Please, sir, mother wants a sermon book, and 
another book." 

To these undecided ones I simply say, now has 
the time come for decision. Your school studies 
have undoubtedly opened up so many subjects 
to you that you very naturally find it hard to 
select between them. Shall you keep up your 
drawing, or your music, or your history, or your 
botany, or your chemistry? Very well in the 
schools, my dear Alice, to have started you in 
these things, but now you are coming to be a 
woman, it is for you to decide which shall go 
forward ; it is not for Miss Winstanley, far less 
for me-, who never saw your face, and know noth- 
ing of what you can or cannot do. 

Now you can decide in this way. Tell me, or 
tell yourself, what is the passage in your reading 
or in your life for the last week which rests on 
your memory. Let us see if we thoroughly 
understand that passage. If we do not, we will 
see if we cannot learn to. That will give us a 
" course of reading " for the next twelve months, 
or if we choose, for the rest of our lives. There 
is no end, you will see, to a true course of read- 
ing; and, on the other hand, you may about as 
well begin at one place as another. Remember 
that you have infinite lives before you, so you 
need not hurry in the details for fear the work 
should be never done. 

Now I must show you how to go to work, by 
supposing you have been interested in some par- 



80 How to do It 

ticular passage. Let us take a passage from 
Macaulay, which I marked in the Edinburgh 
Review for Sydney to speak, twenty-nine years 
ago, — I think before I had ever heard Macaulay's 
name. A great many of you boys have spoken it 
at school since then, and many of you girls have 
heard scraps from it. It is a brilliant passage, 
rather too ornate for daily food, but not amiss for 
a luxury, more than candied orange is after a state 
dinner. He is speaking of the worldly wisdom 
and skilful human policy of the method of organi- 
zation of the Roman Catholic Church. He 
says : — 

"The history of that Church joins together the 
two great ages of human civilization. No other 
institution is left standing which carries the mind 
back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice 
rose from the Pantheon, when camelopards and 
tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The 
proudest royal houses are but of yesterday when 
compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. 
That line we trace back, in an unbroken series, 
from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the 
nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned 
Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of 
Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in 
the twilight of fable. The Republic of Venice 
came next in antiquity. But the Republic of 
Venice was modern when compared to the Papacy ; 
and the Republic of Venice is gone, and the 
Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in 



How to Read 81 

decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and 
youthful vigor. The Catholic Church is still 
sending forth to the farthest ends of the world 
missionaries as zealous as those who landed in 
Kent with Augustine; and still confronting hostile 
kings with the same spirit with which she con- 
fronted Attila. . . . 

" She was great and respected before the Saxon 
had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had 
passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still 
flourished at Antioch, when idols were still wor- 
shipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may 
still exist in undiminished vigor when some trav- 
eller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a 
vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of 
London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." 

I. We will not begin by considering the wisdom 
or the mistake of the general opinion here laid 
down. We will begin by trying to make out what 
is the real meaning of the leading words employed. 
Look carefully along the sentence, and see if you 
are quite sure of what is meant by such terms as 
" The Roman Catholic Church," " the Pantheon," 
" the Flavian amphitheatre," " the Supreme Pon- 
tiffs," " the Pope who crowned Napoleon," " the 
Pope who crowned Pepin," "the Republic of 
Venice," " the missionaries who landed in Kent," 
" Augustine," " the Saxon had set foot in Britain," 
" the Frank had passed the Rhine," " Grecian 
eloquence still flourished at Antioch," "idols in 

6 



82 How to do It 

Mecca," " New Zealand," " London Bridge," " St. 
Paul's." 

For really working up a subject — and this 
sentence now is to be our subject — I advise a 
blank book, and, for my part, I like to write down 
the key words or questions, in a vertical line, quite 
far apart from each other, on the first pages. You 
will see why, if you will read on. 

II. Now go to work on this list. What do you 
really know about the organization of the Roman 
Catholic Church? If you find you are vague 
about it, that such knowledge as you have is only 
half knowledge, which is no knowledge, read till 
you are clear. Much information is not necessary, 
but good, as far as it goes, is necessary on any 
subject. This is a controverted subject. You 
ought to try, therefore, to read some statement by 
a Catholic author, and some statement by a Prot- 
estant. To find out what to read on this or any 
subject, there are different clews. 

I. Any encyclopaedia, good or bad, will set you 
on the trail. Most of you have or can have an 
encyclopaedia at command. There are one-volume 
encyclopaedias, better than nothing, which are very 
cheap. You can pick up an edition of the old 
"Encyclopaedia Americana," in twelve volumes, for 
ten or twelve dollars. Or you can buy Appleton's, 
which is really quite good, for sixty dollars a set. 
I do not mean to have you rest on any encyclo- 
paedia, but you will find one at the start an ex- 
cellent guide-post. Suppose you have the old 



How to Read 83 

" Encyclopaedia Americana." You will find there 
that the " Roman Catholic Church " is treated by 
two writers, — one a Protestant, and one a Catholic. 
Read both, and note in your book such allusions 
as interest you, which you want more light upon. 
Do not note everything which you do not know, 
for then you cannot get forward. But note all 
that specially interest you. For instance, it seems 
that the Roman Catholic Church is not so called 
by that church itself. The officers of that church 
might call it the Roman Church, or the Catholic 
Church, but would not call it the Roman Catholic 
Church. At the Congress of Vienna, Cardinal 
Consalvi objected to the joint use of the words 
Roman Catholic Church. Do you know what the 
Congress of Vienna was? No? then make a 
memorandum, if you want to know. We might 
put in another for Cardinal Consalvi. He was a 
man, who had a father and mother, perhaps broth- 
ers and sisters. He will give us a little human 
interest if we stop to look him up. But do not 
stop for him now. Work through " Roman 
Catholic Church," and keep these memoranda in 
your book for another day. 

2. Quite different from the encyclopaedia is 
another book of reference, " Poole's Index." This 
is a general index to seventy-three magazines and 
reviews, which were published between the years 
1802 and 1852. Now a great deal of the best 
work of this century has been put into such 
journals. A reference, then, to " Poole's Index " 



84 How to do It 

is a reference to some of the best separate papers 
on the subjects which for fifty years had most 
interest for the world of reading men and women. 
Let us try "Poole's Index" on "The Republic 
of Venice." There are references to articles on 
Venice in the New England Magazine, in the 
Pamphleteer, in the Monthly Review, Edinburgh, 
Quarterly, Westminster, and De Bow's Reviews. 
Copy all these references carefully, if you have 
any chance at any time of access to any of these 
journals. It is not, you know, at all necessary to 
have them in the house. Probably there is some 
friend's collection or public library where you can 
find one or more of them. If you live in or near 
Boston, or New York, or Philadelphia, or Charles- 
ton, or New Orleans, or Cincinnati, or Chicago, or 
St. Louis, or Ithaca, you can find every one. 1 

When you have carefully gone down this origi- 
nal list, and made your memoranda for it, you are 
prepared to work out these memoranda. You 
begin now to see how many there are. You must 
be guided, of course, in your reading, by the time 
you have, and by the opportunity for getting the 
books. But aside from that, you may choose 
what you like best for a beginning. To make this 
simple by an illustration, I will suppose you have 
been using the old " Encyclopaedia Americana," 
or " Appleton's Cyclopaedia" and " Poole's Index" 
only, for your first list. As I should draw it up, it 
would look like this : — 

1 These were the names in 187 1. 



How to Read 



85 



CYCLOPEDIA. POOLE S INDEX. 

ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 



See (for instance) 
Council of Trent. 
Chrysostom. 
Congress of Vienna. 

Cardinal Consalvi. 



Eclectic Rev., 4th S. 13, 485. 
Quart. Rev., 71, 108. 
For. Quart. Rev., 27,184. 
Brownson's Rev., 2d S. 1, 413 

3> 309- 
N. Brit. Rev., 10, 21. 



THE PANTHEON. 



Built by Agrippa. Consecrated, 
607, to St. Mary ad Martyros. 
Called Rotunda. 



THE FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATRE. 

The Coliseum, b. by T. Flavius I 

Vespasian. 

SUPREME PONTIFFS. 



Popes. The line begins with 
St. Peter, a. d. 42. Ends with 
Pius IX., 1846. 



New Englander, 7, 169. 
N. Brit. Rev., 11, 13. 



POPE WHO CROWNED NAPOLEON. 

Pius VII., at Notre Dame, in I For. Quart. Rev., 20, 54. 
Paris, Dec. 2, 1804. | 

POPE WHO CROWNED PEPIN. 

Probably Pepin le Bref is meant. 
But he was not crowned by 
a Pope. Crowned by Arch- 
bishop Boniface of Mayence, 
at the advice of Pope Zach- 
ary. £. @ 715, </. 768. 

REPUBLIC OF VENICE. 



452 to 181 5. St. Real's His- 
tory. 

Otway's Tragedy, Venice Pre- 
served. 

Hazlitt's Hist, of Venice. 

Ruskin's Stones of Venice. 



Quart. Rev., 31, 420. 
Month. Rev., 90, 525. 
West. Rev., 23, 38. 



86 



How to do It 



MISSIONARIES IN KENT. 

| Dublin Univ. Mag., 21, 212. 

AUGUSTINE. 



There are two Augustines. This 
is St. Austin, b. in 5th cen- 
tury, d. 604-614. 

Southey's Book of Church. 

Sharon Turner's Anglo-Saxons. 

Wm. of Malmesbury 

Bede's Ecc. History. 



SAXON IN BRITAIN. 



Turner as above, 
Ang.-Saxon Chronicle. 
Six old Eng. Chronicles. 



Edin. Rev., 89, 79. 
Quart. Rev., 7, 92. 
Eclect. Rev., 25, 669. 



FRANK PASSED THE RHINE. 

Well established on west side 1 For. Quart. Rev., 17, 139. 
at the beginning of 5th cen- 
tury. 1 

. GREEK ELOQUENCE AT ANTIOCH. 



Miiller's Antiquitates Antioch- 
ianae. 



Greek Orators. Ed. Rev., 36 
62. 



IDOLS IN MECCA. 



Burckhardt's Travels. 
Burton's Travels. 



NEW ZEALAND. 



3 islands, as large as Italy. Dis- 
covered 1642; taken by Cook 
for England 1769. 

Gov. sent out 1838. 

Thomson's story of N. Z. 

Cook's Voyages. 

Sir G. Gray's Poems, &c, of 
Maoris. 



N. Am. Rev., 18, 328. 



West. Rev., 45, 133. 

Edin. Rev., 91, 231 ; 56, 333. 
N. Brit. Rev., 16, 176. 
Living Age. 



How to Read 87 



LONDON BRIDGE. 

5 elliptical arches. " Presents 
an aspect unequalled for in- 
terest and animation." 

ST. PAUL'S. 
Built in thirty years between 
1675 an d I 705> by Christ. 
Wren. 

Now I am by no means going to leave you 
to the reading of cyclopaedias. The vice of 
cyclopaedias is that they are dull. What is done 
for this passage of Macaulay in the lists above is 
only preliminary. It could be easily done in 
three hours' time, if you went carefully to work. 
And when you have done it, you have taught 
yourself a good deal about your own knowledge 
and your own ignorance, — about what you should 
read, and what you should not attempt. So far it 
fits you for selecting your own course of reading. 

I have arranged this only by way of illustration. 
I do not mean that I think these a particularly 
interesting or particularly important series of sub- 
jects. I do mean, however, to show you that the 
moment you will sift any book or any series of sub- 
jects, you will be finding out where your ignorance 
is, and what you want to know. 

Supposing you belong to the fortunate half of 
people who know what they need, I should advise 
you to begin in just the same way. 

For instance, Walter, to whom I alluded above, 
wants to know about Fly-fishing. This is the way 
his list looks : — 



88 



How to do It 



FLY-FISHING. 



CYCLOPEDIA. 



(For instance) 

W. Scott, Redgauntlet. 

Dr. Davy's Researches, 1839. 
Cuvier and Valenciennes, Hist. 

Naturelle des Poissons, Vol. 

XXI. 

Richardson's Fauna Bor. Amer. 



De Kay, Zoology of N. Y. 
Agassiz, Lake Superior. 



POOLE'S INDEX. 

Quart. Rev., 69, 121; 37,345- 
Edin. Rev., 78, 46, or 87 ; 93, 

174, or 340. 
Am. Whig Rev., 6, 490. 
N. Brit. Rev., 11, 32, or 95; 1, 

326; 8, 160; or Liv. Age, 2, 

291 ; 17, 1. 
Blackwood, 51, 296. 
Quart. Rev. 67, 98, or 332 ; 69, 

226. 
Blackwood, 10, 249"; 49, 302 ; 

21, 815; 24, 248; 35, 775; 

38, 119, 63, 673; 5, 123; 5, 

281, 7, i37. 
Fraser, 42, 136. 



See also, 

Izaak Walton, Compleat Angler. (Walton and Cotton 
first appeared 1750.) 

Humphrey Day's Salmonia, or The Days of Fly-Fishing. 

Blakey, History of Angling Literature. 

Oppianus, De Venatione, Piscatione et Aucupio. (Hali- 
eutica translated.) Jones's English translation was pub- 
lished in Oxford, 1722. 

Bronner, Fischergedichte und Erzahlungen (Fishermen's 
Songs and Stories). 

Norris, T., American Angler's Book. 

Zouch, Life of Iz. Walton. 

Salmon Fisheries. Parliamentary Reports. Annual. 

" Blackwood's Magazine, an important landmark in Eng- 
lish angling literature." See Noctes Ambrosianae. 

H.W. Beecher, N. Y. Independent, 1853. 

In the New York edition of Walton and Cotton is a list of 
books on Angling, which Blakey enlarges. His list contains 
four hundred and fifty titles. 

American's Angler's Guide, 1849. 

Storer, D. H., Fishes of Massachusetts. 



How to Read 89 

Storer, D. H., Fishes of N. America. 

Girard, Fresh-Water Fishes of N. America (Smithsonian 
Contributions, Vol. III.). 

Richard Penn, Maxims and Hints for an Angler, and Mis- 
eries of Fishing, 1839. 

James Wilson, The Rod and the Gun, 1840. 

Herbert, Frank Forester's Fish of N. America. 

Yarrel's British Fishes. 

The same, on the Growth of Salmon. 

Boy's Own Book. 

Please to observe, now, that nobody is obliged 
to read up all the authorities that we have lighted 
on. What the list means is this : that you have 
made the inquiry for " a sermon book and another 
book," and you are now thus far on your way to- 
ward an answer. These are the first answers that 
come to hand. Work on and you will have more. 
I cannot pretend to give that answer for any one 
of you, — far less for all those who would be likely 
to be interested in all the subjects which are named 
here. But with such clews as are given above, 
you will soon find your ways into the different 
parts that interest you of our great picnic grove. 

Remember, however, that there are no royal 
roads. The difference between a well-educated 
person and one not well educated is, that the first 
knows how to find what he needs, and the other 
does not. It is not so much that the first is bet- 
ter informed on details than the second, though he 
probably is. But his power to collect the details 
at short notice is vastly greater than is that of the 
uneducated or unlearned man. 



go How to do It 

In different homes the resources at command 
are so different that I must not try to advise 
much as to your next step beyond the lists above. 
There are many good catalogues of books, with 
indexes to subjects. In the Congressional Library, 
my friend Mr. Vinton is preparing a magnificent 
" Index of Subjects," which will be of great use 
to the whole nation. In Harvard College Library 
they have a manuscript catalogue referring to the 
subjects described in the books of that collection. 
The " Cross-References " of the Astor Catalogue, 
and of the Boston Library Catalogue, are invalu- 
able to all readers, young or old. Your teacher at 
school can help you in nothing more than in 
directing you to the books you need on any sub- 
ject. Do not go and say, " Miss Winstanley, or 
Miss Parsons, I want a nice book ; " but have 
sense enough to know what you want it to be 
about. Be able to say, " Miss Parsons, I should 
like to know about heraldry," or " about butter- 
flies," or " about water-color painting," or " about 
Robert Browning," or "about the Mysteries of 
Udolpho." Miss Parsons will tell you what to 
read. And she will be very glad to tell you. Or 
if you are not at school, this very thing among 
others is what the minister is for. Do not be 
frightened. He will be very glad to see you. Go 
round to his house, not on Saturday, but at the 
time he receives guests, and say to him : " Mr. 
Ingham, we girls have made quite a collection of 
old porcelain, and we want to know more about it. 



How to Read 91 

Will you be kind enough to tell us where we can 
find anything about porcelain? We have read Miss 
Edgeworth's ' Prussian Vase,' and we have read 
1 Palissy the Potter/ and we should like to know 
more about Sevres, and Dresden, and Palissy." 
Ingham will be delighted, and in a fortnight, if 
you will go to work, you will know more about 
what you ask for than any one person knows in 
America. 

And I do not mean that all your reading is to be 
digging or hard work. I can show that I do not, 
by supposing that we carry out the plan of the list 
above, on any one of its details, and write down 
the books which that detail suggests to us. Per- 
haps Venice has seemed to you the most interest- 
ing head of these which we have named. If we 
follow that up only in the references given above, 
we shall find our book list for Venice, just as it 
comes, in no order but that of accident, is : — 

St. Real, Relation des Espagnols contre Venise. 

Otway's Venice Preserved. 

Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. 

Howells's Venetian Life. 

Blondus, De Origine Venetorum. 

Muratori's Annals. 

Ruskin's Stones of Venice. 

D' Israeli's Contarini Fleming. 

Contarina, Delia Republica di Venetia. 

Flagg, Venice from 1797 to 1849. 

Crassus, De Republica Veneta. 

Jarmot, De Republica Veneta. 

Voltaire's General History. 

Sismondi's History of Italy. 



92 How to do It 

Lord Byron's Letters. 

Sketches of Venetian History, Fam. Library, 26, 27. 

Venetian History, Hazlitt. 

Dandolo, G. La Caduta della Republica di Venezia (The 

Fall of the Republic of Venice). 
Ridolfi, C, Lives of the Venetian Painters. 
Monagas, J. T., Late Events in Venice. 
Delavigne, Marino Faliero, a Historical Drama. 
Lord Byron, The same. 
Smedley's Sketches from Venetian History. 
Daru, Hist, de la Re'publique de Venise. 

So much for the way in which to choose your 
books. As to the choice, you will make it, not I. 
If you are a goose, cackling a great deal, silly at 
heart and wholly indifferent about to-morrow, you 
will choose just what you call the interesting titles. 
If you are a girl of sense, or a boy of sense, you 
will choose, when you have made your list, at least 
two books, determined to master them. You will 
choose one on the side of information, and one, for 
the purpose of amusement, on the side of fancy. 
If you choose in " Venice " the " Merchant of 
Venice," you will not add to it " Venice Pre- 
served," but you will add to it, say the Venetian 
chapters of " Sismondi's Italy." You will read 
every day; and you will divide your reading time 
into the two departments, — you will read for fact 
and you will read for fancy. Roots must have 
leaves, you know, and leaves must have roots. 
Bodies must have spirits, and, for this world at 
least, spirits must have bodies. Fact must be 
lighted by fancy, and fancy must be balanced by 
fact. Making this the principle of your selection, 



How to Read 93 

you may, nay, you must, select for yourselves your 
books. And in my next chapter I will do my best 
to teach you — 

HOW TO READ THEM. 



CHAPTER VI 

HOW TO READ 
II 

LlSTON tells a story of a nice old lady, I think the 
foster-sister of the godmother of his brother-in-law's 
aunt, who came to make them a visit in the country. 
The first day after she arrived proved to be much 
such a day as this is, much such a day as the first 
of a visit in the country is apt to be, a heavy pelt- 
ing northeaster, when it is impossible to go out, 
and every one is thrown on his own resources in- 
doors. The different ladies under Mrs. Liston's 
hospitable roof gathered themselves to their various 
occupations, and some one asked old Mrs. Dubba- 
doe if she would not like to read. 

She said she should. 

"What shall I bring you from the library?" 
said Miss Ellen. " Do not trouble yourself to go 
upstairs." 

" My dear Ellen, I should like the same book I 
had last year when I was here. It was a very nice 
book, and I was very much interested in it." 



94 How to do It 

" Certainly," said Miss Ellen; " what was it? I 
will bring it at once." 

"I do not remember its name, my dear; your 
mother brought it to me; I think she would 
know." 

But, unfortunately, Mrs. Liston, when applied to, 
had forgotten. 

"Was it a novel, Mrs. Dubbadoe?" 

"I can't remember that; my memory is not as 
good as it was, my dear, but it was a very interest- 
ing book." 

"Do you remember whether it had plates? 
Was it one of the books of birds, or of natural 
history?" 

" No, dear, I can't tell you about that. But, 
Ellen, you will find it, I know. The color of the 
cover was the color of the top of the baluster ! " 

So Ellen went. She has a good eye for color, 
and as she ran upstairs she took the shade of the 
baluster in her eye, matched it perfectly, as she ran 
along the books in the library, with the Russia 
half-binding of the coveted volume, and brought 
that in triumph to Mrs. Dubbadoe. It proved to 
be the right book. Mrs. Dubbadoe found in it 
the piece of corn-colored worsted she had left for 
a mark the year before, so she was able to go on 
where she had stopped then. 

Liston tells this story to trump one of mine 
about a schoolmate of ours, who was explaining to 
me about his theological studies. I asked him 
what he had been reading. 



How to Read 95 

" Oh, a capital book; King lent it to me; I will 
ask him to lend it to you." 

I said I would ask King for the book, if he would 
tell me who was the author. 

" I do not remember his name. I had not known 
his name before. But that made no difference. It 
is a capital book. King told me I should find it so, 
and I did ; I made a real study of it ; copied a good 
deal from it before I returned it." 

I asked whether it was a book of natural 
theology. 

"I don't know as you would call it natural 
theology. Perhaps it was. You had better see 
it yourself. Tell King it was the book he lent 
me." 

I was a little persistent, and asked if it were a 
book of biography. 

" Well, I do not know as I should say it was a 
book of biography. Perhaps you would say so. 
I do not remember that there was much biography 
in it. But it was an excellent book. King had 
read it himself, and I' found it all he said it was." 

I asked if it was critical, — if it explained 
Scripture. 

" Perhaps it did. I should not like to say 
whether it did or not. You can find that out 
yourself if you read it. But it is a very interest- 
ing book and a very valuable book. King said so, 
and I found it was so. You had better read it, and 
I know King can tell you what it is." 

Now in these two stories is a very good illustra- 



96 How to do It 

tion of the way in which a great many people read. 
The notion comes into people's lives that the mere 
process of reading is itself virtuous. Because young 
men who read instead of gamble are known to be 
" steadier" than the gamblers, and because children 
who read on Sunday make less noise and general 
row than those who will play tag in the neighbors' 
front-yards, there has grown up this notion, that to 
read is in itself one of the virtuous acts. Some 
people, if they told the truth, when counting up 
the seven virtues, would count them as Purity, 
Temperance, Meekness, Frugality, Honesty, Cour- 
age, and Reading. The consequence is that there 
are unnumbered people who read as Mrs. Dubba- 
doe did or as Lysimachus did, without the slightest 
knowledge of what the books have contained. 

My dear Dollie, Pollie, Sallie, Marthie, or any 
other of my young friends whose names end in z>, 
who have favored me by reading thus far, the 
chances are three out of four that I could take 
the last novel but three that you read, change the 
scene from England to France, change the time 
from now to the seventeenth century, make the men 
swear by St. Denis, instead of talking modern slang, 
name the women Jacqueline and Marguerite, instead 
of Maud and Blanche, and, if Harpers would print 
it, as I dare say they would if the novel was good, 
you would read it through without one suspicion 
that you had read the same book before. 

So you see that it is not certain that you know 
how to read, even if you took the highest prize for 



How to Read 97 

reading in the Amplian class of Ingham University 
at the last exhibition. You may pronounce all the 
words well, and have all the rising inflections right, 
and none of the falling ones wrong, and yet not 
know how to read so that your reading shall be of 
any permanent use to you. 

For what is the use of reading if you forget it all 
the next day? 

" But, my dear Mr. Hale," says as good a girl as 
Laura, " how am I going to help myself? What I 
remember I remember, and what I do not remem- 
ber I do not. I should be very glad to remember 
all the books I have read, and all that is in them ; 
but if I can't, I can't, and there is the end of it." 

No ! my dear Laura, that is not the end of it. 
And that is the reason this paper is written. 
A child of God can, before the end comes, do any- 
thing she chooses to, with such help as he is 
willing to give her; and he has been kind enough 
so to make and so to train you that you can train 
your memory to remember and to recall the 
useful or the pleasant things you meet in your 
reading. Do you know, Laura, that I have here a 
note you wrote when you were eight years old? 
It is as badly written as any note I ever saw. 
There are also twenty words in it spelled wrong. 
Suppose you had said then, " If I can't, I can't, 
and there 's an end of it." You never would have 
written me in the lady-like, manly handwriting you 
write in to-day, spelling rightly as a matter of mere 
feeling and of course, so that you are annoyed 

7 



98 How to do It 

now that I should say that every word is spelled 
correctly. Will you think, dear Laura, what a 
tremendous strain on memory is involved in all 
this? Will you remember that you and Miss 
Sears and Miss Winstanley, and your mother, 
most of all, have trained your memory till it can 
work these marvels? All you have to do now in 
your reading is to carry such training forward, and 
you can bring about such a power of classification 
and of retention that you shall be mistress of the 
books you have read for most substantial purposes. 
To read with such results is reading indeed. And 
when I say I want to give some hints how to read, 
it is for reading with that view. 

When Harry and Lucy were on their journey 
to the sea-side, they fell to discussing whether 
they had rather have the gift of remembering all 
they read, or of once knowing everything, and 
then taking their chances for recollecting it when 
they wanted it. Lucy, who had a quick memory, 
was willing to take her chance. But Harry, who 
was more methodical, hated to lose anything he 
had once learned, and he thought he had rather 
have the good fairy give him the gift of recollect- 
ing all he had once learned. For my part, I quite 
agree with Harry. There are a great many things 
that I have no desire to know. I do not want to 
know in what words the King of Ashantee says, 
" Cut off the heads of those women." I do not 
want to know whether a centipede really has 
ninety-six legs or one hundred and four. I never 



How to Read 99 

did know. I never shall. I have no occasion to 
know. And I am glad not to have my mind 
lumbered up with the unnecessary information. 
On the other hand, that which I have once learned 
or read does in some way or other belong to my 
personal life. I am very glad if I can reproduce 
that in any way, and I am much obliged to any- 
body who will help me. 

For reading, then, the first rules, I think, are : 
Do not read too much at a time; stop when you 
are tired; and, in whatever way, make some re- 
view of what you read, even as you go along. 

Capel Lofft says, in quite an interesting book, 
which plays about the surface of things without 
going very deep, which he calls " Self-Formation," 1 
that his whole life was changed, and indeed saved, 
when he learned that he must turn back at the 
end of each sentence, ask himself what it meant, 
if he believed it or disbelieved it, and, so to speak, 
that he must pack it away as part of his men- 
tal furniture before he took in another sentence. 
That is just as a dentist jams one little bit of gold- 
foil home, and then another, and then another. 
He does not put one large wad on the hollow 
tooth, and then crowd it in all at once. Capel 
Lofft says that this re-flection — going 'forward as a 
serpent does, by a series of backward bends over 
the line — will make a dull book entertaining, 
and will make the reader master of every book 
he reads, through all time. For my part, I think 

1 Self-Formation : Crosby and Nichols. Boston, 1845. 



ioo How to do It 

this is cutting it rather fine, this chopping the book 
up into separate bits. I had rather read as one of 
my wisest counsellors did ; he read, say a page, or 
a paragraph of a page or two, more or less ; then 
he would look across at the wall, and consider the 
author's statement, and fix it on his mind, and 
then read on. I do not do this, however. I read 
half an hour or an hour, till I am ready, perhaps, 
to put the book by. Then I examine myself. 
What has this amounted to? What does he say? 
What does he prove? Does he prove it? What 
is there new in it? Where did he get it? If it 
is necessary in such an examination, you can go 
back over the passage, correct your first impression, 
if it is wrong, find out the meaning that the writer 
has carelessly concealed, and such a process makes 
it certain that you yourself will remember his 
thought or his statement. 

I can remember, I think, everything I saw in 
Europe which was worth seeing, if I saw it twice. 
But there was many a wonder which I was taken 
to see in the whirl of sight-seeing, of which I 
have no memory, and of which I cannot force any 
recollection. I remember that at Malines — what 
we call Mechlin — our train stopped nearly an 
hour. At the station a crowd of guides were 
shouting that there was time to go and see Ru- 

bens's picture of , at the church of . 

This seemed to us a droll contrast to the cry at 
our stations, " Fifteen minutes for refreshments ! " 
It offered such aesthetic refreshment in place of 



How to Read 101 

carnal oysters, that purely for the frolic we went 
to see. We were hurried across some sort of 
square into the church, saw the picture, admired 
it, came away, and forgot it, — clear and clean 
forgot it ! My dear Laura, I do not know what it 
was about any more than you do. But if I had 
gone to that church the next day, and had seen it 
again, I should have fixed it forever on my mem- 
ory. Moral: Renew your acquaintance with 
whatever you want to remember. I think Ing- 
ham says somewhere that it is the slight differ- 
ence between the two stereoscopic pictures which 
gives to them, when one overlies the other, their 
relief and distinctness. If he does not say it, I 
will say it for him now. 

I think it makes no difference how you make 
this mental review of the author, but I do think 
it essential that, as you pass from one division of 
his work to another, you should make it some- 
how. 

Another good rule for memory is indispensable, 
I think, — namely, to read with a pencil in hand. 
If the book is your own, you had better make 
what I may call your own index to it on the hard 
white page which lines the cover at the end. 
That is, you can write down there just a hint of 
the things you will be apt to like to see again, 
noting the page on which they are. If the book 
is not your own, do this on a little slip of paper, 
which you may keep separately. These memo- 
randa will be, of course, of all sorts of things. 



102 How to do It 

Thus they will be facts which you want to know, 
or funny stories which you think will amuse some 
one, or opinions which you may have a doubt 
about. Suppose you had got hold of that very 
rare book, " Veragas's History of the Pacific Ocean 
and its Shores ; " here might be your private in- 
dex at the end of the first volume : — 

Percentage of salt in water, 1 1 : Gov. Revillagi- 
gedo, 19: Caciques and potatoes, 23: Lime water 
for scurvy, 29: Enata, Kanaka, avrjp, avd? 42: 
Magelhaens vs. Wilkes, 57: Coral Insects, 72: 
Gigantic ferns, 84, &c, &c, &c. 

Very likely you may never need one of these 
references ; but if you do, it is certain that you 
will have no time to waste in hunting for them. 
Make your memorandum, and you are sure. 

Bear in mind all along that each book will 
suggest other books which you are to read sooner 
or later. In your memoranda note with care the 
authors who are referred to of whom you know 
little or nothing, if you think you should like to 
know more, or ought to know more. Do not 
neglect this last condition, however. You do not 
make the memorandum to show it at the Philo- 
gabblian ; you make it for yourself; and it means 
that you yourself need this additional informa- 
tion. 

Whether to copy much from books or not? 
That is a question; and the answer is: " That 
depends." If you have but few books, and 
much time and paper and ink; and if you are 



How to Read 103 

likely to have fewer books, why, nothing is nicer 
and better than to make for use in later life good 
extract-books to your own taste, and for your 
own purposes. But if you own your books, or 
are likely to have them at command, time is 
short, and the time spent in copying would prob- 
ably be better spent in reading. There are some 
very diffusive books, difficult because diffusive, 
of which it is well to write close digests, if 
you are really studying them. When we read 
John Locke, for instance, in college, we had to 
make abstracts, and we used to stint ourselves to 
a line for one of his chatty sections. That was 
good practice for writing, and we remember what 
was in the sections to this hour. If you copy, 
make a first-rate index to your extracts. They 
sell books prepared for the purpose, but you may 
just as well make your own. 

You see I am not contemplating any very rapid 
or slap-dash work. You may try that in your 
novels, or books of amusement, if you choose, and 
I will not be very cross about it; but for the 
books of improvement, I want you to improve by 
reading them. Do not " gobble " them up so 
that five years hence you shall not know whether 
you have read them or not. What I advise seems 
slow to you, but if you will, any of you, make or 
find two hours a day to read in this fashion, you 
will be one day accomplished men and women. 
Very few professional men, known to me, get so 
much time as that for careful and systematic read- 



104 How to do It 

ing. If any boy or girl wants really to know 
what comes of such reading, I wish he would read 
the life of my friend George Livermore, which 
our friend Charles Deane has just now written for 
the Historical Society of Massachusetts. There 
was a young man, who when he was a boy in a 
store began his systematic reading. He never left 
active and laborious business ; but when he died 
he was one of the accomplished historical scholars 
of America. He had no superior in his special 
lines of study ; he was a recognized authority and 
leader among men who had given their lives to 
scholarship. 

I have not room to copy it here, but I wish any 
of you would turn to a letter of Frederick Robert- 
son's near the end of the second volume of his 
letters, where he speaks of this very matter. He 
says he read, when he was at Oxford, but sixteen 
books with his tutors. But he read them so that 
they became a part of himself, " as the iron enters 
a man's blood." And they were books by sixteen 
of the men who have been leaders of the world. 
No bad thing, dear Stephen, to have in your blood 
and brain and bone the vitalizing element that was 
in the lives of such men. 

I need not ask you to look forward so far as to 
the end of a life as long as Mr. George Livermore's, 
and as successful. Without asking that, I will 
say again, what I have implied already, that any 
person who will take any special subject of detail, 
and in a well-provided library will work steadily 



How to go into Society 105 

on that little subject for a fortnight, will at the 
end of the fortnight probably know more of that 
detail than anybody in the country knows. If you 
will study by subjects for the truth, you have the 
satisfaction of knowing that the ground is soon 
very nearly all your own. 

I do not pretend that books are everything. I 
may have occasion some day to teach some of you 
"How to Observe," and then I shall say some very 
hard things about people who keep their books so 
close before their eyes that they cannot see God's 
world nor their fellow men and women. But 
books rightly used are society. Good books are 
the best society; better than is possible without 
them, in any one place, or in any one time. To 
know how to use them wisely and well is to know 
how to make Shakespeare and Milton and Theo- 
dore Hook and Thomas Hood step out from the 
side of your room, at your will, sit down at your 
fire, and talk with you for an hour. I have no 
such society at hand as I write these words, ex- 
cept by such magic. Have you, in your log-cabin 
in No. 7? 

CHAPTER VII 

HOW TO GO INTO SOCIETY 

Some boys and girls are born so that they enjoy 
society, and all the forms of society, from the be- 
ginning. The passion they have for it takes them 



106 How to do It 

right through all the formalities and stiffness of 
morning calls, evening parties, visits on strangers, 
and the like, and they have no difficulty about the 
duties involved in these things. I do not write for 
them, and there is no need at all of their reading 
this paper. 

There are other boys and girls who look with 
half horror and half disgust at all such machinery 
of society. They have been well brought up, in 
intelligent, civilized, happy homes. They have 
their own varied and regular occupations, and it 
breaks these all up when they have to go to the 
birthday party at the Glascocks', or to spend the 
evening with the young lady from Vincennes who 
is visiting Mrs. Vandermeyer. 

. When they have grown older, it happens very 
likely that such boys and girls have to leave 
home, and establish themselves at one or another 
new home, where more is expected of them in a 
social way. Here is Stephen, who has gone 
through the High School, and has now gone over 
to New Altona to be the second teller in the Third 
National Bank there. Stephen's father was in 
college with Mr. Brannan, who was quite a lead- 
ing man in New Altona. Madame Chenevard is 
a sister of Mrs. Schuyler, with whom Stephen's 
mother worked five years on the Sanitary Com- 
mission. All the bank officers are kind to Ste- 
phen, and ask him to come to their nouses ; and 
he, who is one of these young folks whom I have 
been describing, who knows how to be happy at 



How to go into Society 107 

home, but does not know if he is entertaining or 
in any way agreeable in other people's homes, 
really finds that the greatest hardship of his new 
life consists in the hospitalities with which all these 
kind people welcome him. 

Here is a part of a letter from Stephen to me 
— he writes pretty much everything to me : — 

"... Mrs. Judge Tolman has invited me to another 
of her evening parties. Everybody says they are very 
pleasant, and I can see that they are to people who are 
not sticks and oafs. But I am a stick and an oaf. I 
do not like society, and I never did. So I shall decline 
Mrs. Tolman's invitation ; for I have determined to go 
to no more parties here, but to devote my evenings to 
reading." 

Now this is not snobbery or goodyism on Ste- 
phen's part. He is not writing a make-believe 
letter, to deceive me as to the way in which he is 
spending his time. He really had rather occupy 
his evening in reading than in going to Mrs. Tol- 
man's party, — or to Mrs. Anybody's party, — 
and, at the present moment, he really thinks he 
never shall go to any parties again. Just so two 
little girls part from each other on the sidewalk, 
saying, " I never will speak to you again as long 
as I live." Only Stephen is in no sort angry with 
Mrs. Tolman or Mrs. Brannan or Mrs. Chenevard. 
He only thinks that their way is one way, and his 
way is another. His determination is the same 
as Tom's was, which I described in Chapter II. 



108 How to do It 

But where Tom thought his failure was want of 
,talking power, Steve really thinks that he hates 
'society. 

It is for boys and girls like Stephen, who think 
they are " sticks and oafs," and that they cannot 
go into society, that this paper is written. 

You need not get up from your seats and come 
and stand in a line for me to talk to you, — tallest 
at the right, shortest at the left, as if you were at 
dancing-school, facing M. Labbasse. I can talk 
to you just as well where you are sitting; and, as 
Obed Clapp said to me once, I know very well 
what you are going to say before you say it. 
Dear children, I have had it said to me fourscore 
and ten times by forty-six boys and forty-six girls 
who were just as dull and just as bright as you 
are, — as like you, indeed, as two pins. 

There is Dunster, — Horace Dunster, — at this 
moment the favorite talker in society in Washing- 
ton, as indeed he is on the floor of the Senate. 
Ask, the next time you are at Washington, how 
many dinner-parties are put off till a day can be 
found at which Dunster can be present. Now I 
remember very well how, a year or two after 
Dunster graduated, he and Messer, who is now 
Lieutenant-Governor of Labrador, and some one 
whom I will not name, were sitting on the shore 
of the Catteraugus Lake, rubbing themselves dry 
after their swim. And Dunster said he was not 
going to any more parties. Mrs. Judge Park had 
asked him, because she loved his sister, but she 



How to go into Society 109 

did not care for him a straw, and he did not know 
the Cattaraugus people, and he was afraid of the 
girls, who knew a great deal more than he did, 
and so he was " no good " to anybody, and he 
would not go any longer. He would stay at home 
and read Plato in the original. Messer wondered 
at all this; he enjoyed Mrs. Judge Park's parties, 
and Mrs. Dr. Holland's teas, and he could not see 
why as bright a fellow as Dunster should not en- 
joy them. " But I tell you," said Dunster, " that 
I do not enjoy them; and, what is more, I tell 
you that these people do not want me to come. 
They ask me because they like my sister, as I 
said, or my father, or my mother." 

Then some one else who was there, whom I do 
not name, who was at least two years older than 
these young men, and so was qualified to advise 
them, addressed them thus : — 

"You talk like children. Listen. It is of no 
consequence whether you like to go to these 
places or do not like to go. None of us were sent 
to Cattaraugus to do what we like to do. We were 
sent here to do what we can to make this place 
cheerful, spirited, and alive, — a part of the king- 
dom of heaven. Now if everybody in Cattaraugus 
sulked off to read Plato, or to read " The Three 
Guardsmen," Cattaraugus would go to the dogs 
very fast, in its general sulkiness. There must be 
intimate social order, and this is the method pro- 
vided. Therefore, first, we must all of us go to 
these parties, whether we want to or not ; because 



1 1 o How to do It 

we are in the world, not to do what we like to do, 
but what the world needs. 

" Second," said this unknown some one, " noth- 
ing is more snobbish than this talk about Mrs. 
Park's wanting us or not wanting us. It simply 
shows that we are thinking of ourselves a good 
deal more than she is. What Mrs. Park wants is 
as many men at her party as she has women. She 
has made her list so as to balance them. As the 
result of that list, she has said she wanted me. 
Therefore I am going. Perhaps she does want 
me. If she does, I shall oblige her. Perhaps she 
does not want me. If she does not, I shall punish 
her, if I go, for telling what is not true; and I 
shall go cheered and buoyed up by that reflection. 
Anyway I go, not because I want to or do not 
want to, but because I am asked ; and in a world 
of mutual relationships it is one of the things 
that I must do." 

No one replied to this address, but they all 
three put on their dress-coats and went. Dunster 
went to every party in Cattaraugus that winter, 
and, as I have said, has since shown himself a 
most brilliant and successful leader of society. 

The truth is to be found in this little sermon. 
Take society as you find it in the place where you 
live. Do not set yourself up, at seventeen years 
old, as being so much more virtuous or grand or 
learned than the young people round you, or 
the old people round you, that you cannot asso- 
ciate with them on the accustomed terms of the 



How to go into Society 1 1 1 

place. Then you are free from the first diffi- 
culty of young people who have trouble in soci- 
ety ; for you will not be " stuck up," to use a very 
happy phrase of your own age. When anybody, 
in good faith, asks you to a party, and you have 
no pre-engagement or other duty, do not ask 
whether these people are above you or below you, 
whether they know more or know less than you 
do, least of all ask why they invited you, — but 
simply go. It is not of much importance whether 
on that particular occasion, you have what you 
call " a good time " 1 or do not have it. But it is of 
importance that you shall not think yourself a 
person of more consequence in the community 
than others, and that you shall easily and kindly 
adapt yourself to the social life of the people 
among whom you are. 

This is substantially what I have written to 
Stephen about what he is to do at New Altona. 

Now, as for enjoying yourself when you have 
come to the party, — for I wish you to understand 
that, though I have compelled you to go, I am not 
in the least cross about it, — but I want you to 
have what you yourself call a very good time 
when you come there. Oh dear, I can remember 
perfectly the first formal evening party at which I 
had " a good time." Before that I had always 
hated to go to parties, and since that I have al- 

1 I have heard the phrase criticised by people who ought to 
know. But they did not. Dryden says, " The sons of Belial had a 
glorious time/' Dryden is a good enough authority for you and me. 



1 1 2 How to do It 

ways liked to go. I am sorry to say I cannot tell 
you at whose house it was. That is ungrateful in 
me. But I could tell you just how the pillars 
looked between which the sliding doors ran, for I 
was standing by one of them when my eyes were 
opened, as the Orientals say, and I received great 
light. I had been asked to this party, as I sup- 
posed and as I still suppose, by some people who 
wanted my brother and sister to come, and thought 
it would not be kind to ask them without asking 
me. I did not know five people in the room. It 
was in a college town where there were five gen- 
tlemen for every lady, so that I could get nobody 
to dance with me of the people I did know. So it 
was that I stood sadly by this pillar, and said to 
myself, " You were a fool to come here where no- 
body wants you, and where you did not want to 
come ; and you look like a fool standing by this 
pillar with nobody to dance with and nobody to 
talk to." 

At this moment, and as if to enlighten the cloud 
in which I was, the revelation flashed upon me, 
which has ever since set me all right in such mat- 
ters. Expressed in words, it would be stated thus : 
" You are a much greater fool if you suppose that 
anybody in this room knows or cares where you 
are standing or where you are not standing. 
They are attending to their affairs and you had 
best attend to yours, quite indifferent as to what 
they think of you." In this reflection I took im- 
mense comfort, and it has carried me through 



How to go into Society 1 1 3 

every form of social encounter from that day to 
this day. I don't remember in the least what I 
did, whether I looked at the portfolios of pictures, 
— which for some reason young people think a 
very poky thing to do, but which I like to do, — 
whether I buttoned some fellow-student who was 
less at ease than I, or whether I talked to some 
nice old lady who had seen with her own eyes half 
the history of the world which is worth knowing. 
I only know that, after I found out that nobody else 
at the party was looking at me or was caring for 
me, I began to enjoy it as thoroughly as I enjoyed 
staying at home. 

Not long after I read this in Sartor Resartus, 
which was a great comfort to me : " What Act of 
Parliament was there that you should be happy? 
Make up your mind that you deserve to be hanged, 
as is most likely, and you will take it as a favor 
that you are hanged in silk, and not in hemp." 
Of which the application in this particular case is 
this : that if Mrs. Park or Mrs. Tolman are kind 
enough to open their beautiful houses for me, to 
fill them with beautiful flowers, to provide a band 
of music, to have ready their books of prints and 
their foreign photographs, to light up the walks in 
the garden and the greenhouse, and to provide a 
delicious supper for my entertainment, and then 
ask, I will say, only one person whom I want to 
see, is it not very ungracious, very selfish, and very 
snobbish for me to refuse to take what is, because 
of something which is not, — because Ellen is not 

8 



1 14 How to do It 

there or George is not? What Act of Parliament 
is there that I should have everything in my own 
way? 

As it is with most things, then, the rule for 
going into society is not to have any rule at all. 
Go unconsciously; or, as St. Paul would put it, 
" Do not think of yourself more highly than you 
ought to think." Everything but conceit can be 
forgiven to a young person in society. St. Paul, 
by the way, high-toned gentleman as he was, is a 
very thorough guide in such affairs, as he is in 
most others. If you will get the marrow out of 
those little scraps at the end of his letters, you will 
not need any hand-books of etiquette. 

As I read this over, to send it to the printer, I 
recollect that, in one of the nicest sets of girls I ever 
knew, they called the thirteenth chapter of the 
First Epistle to the Corinthians the " society chap- 
ter." Read it over, and see how well it fits, the 
next time Maud has been disagreeable, or you 
have been provoked yourself in the "German." 

"The gentleman is quiet," says Mr. Emerson, 
whose essay on society you will read with profit, 
" the lady is serene." Bearing this in mind, you 
will not really expect, when you go to the dance at 
Mrs. Pollexfen's, that while you are standing in the 
library explaining to Mr. Sumner what he does not 
understand about the Alabama Claims, watching 
at the same time with jealous eye the fair form of 
Sybil as she is waltzing in that hated Clifford's 
arms, — you will not, I say, really expect that her 



How to go into Society 1 1 5 

light dress will be wafted into the gaslight over her 
head, she be surrounded with a lambent flame, 
Clifford basely abandon her, while she cries, " O 
Ferdinand, Ferdinand!" — nor that you, leaving 
Mr. Sumner, seizing Mrs. General Grant's camel's- 
hair shawl, rushing down the ball-room, will wrap 
it around Sybil's uninjured form, and receive then 
and there the thanks of her father and mother, 
and their pressing request for your immediate 
union in marriage. Such things do not happen 
outside the Saturday newspapers, and it is a great 
deal better that they do not. " The gentleman is 
quiet, and the lady is serene." In my own private 
judgment, the best thing you can do at any party 
is the particular thing which your host or hostess 
expected you to do when she made the party. If 
it is a whist party, you had better play whist, if 
you can. If it is a dancing party, you had better 
dance, if you can. If it is a music party, you had 
better play or sing, if you can. If it is a croquet 
party, join in the croquet, if you can. When at 
Mrs. Thorndike's grand party, 1 Mrs. Colonel Goffe, 
at seventy-seven, told old Rufus Putnam, who was 
five years her senior, that her dancing days were 
over, he said to her, " Well, it seems to be the 
amusement provided for the occasion." I think 
there is a good deal in that. At all events, do not 
separate yourself from the rest as if you were too 
old or too young, too wise or too foolish, or had 

1 Sayini8i4. House still standing at the corner of Park and 
Beacon Streets, Boston. 



1 1 6 How to do It 

not been enough introduced, or were in any sort of 
different clay from the rest of the pottery. 

And now I will not undertake any specific direc- 
tions for behavior. You know I hate them all. I 
will only repeat to you the advice which my father, 
who was my best friend, gave me after the first 
evening call I ever made. The call was on a gen- 
tleman whom both I and my father greatly loved. 
I knew he would be pleased to hear that I had 
made the visit, and, with some pride, I told him, 
being, as I calculate, thirteen years five months 
and nineteen days old. He was pleased, very 
much pleased, and he said so. " I am glad you 
made the call; it was a proper attention to Mr. 
Palfrey, who is one of your true friends and mine. 
And now that you begin to make calls, let me give 
you one piece of advice. Make them short. The 
people who see you may be very glad to see you. 
But it is certain they were occupied with some- 
thing when you came, and it is certain, therefore, 
that you have interrupted them." 

I was a little dashed in the enthusiasm with 
which I had told of my first visit. But the advice 
has been worth I cannot tell how much to me, — 
years of life, and hundreds of friends. 

Pelham's rule for a visit is, " Stay till you have 
made an agreeable impression, and then leave 
immediately." A plausible rule, but dangerous. 
What if one should not make an agreeable impres- 
sion after all? Did not Belch stay till near three 
in the morning? And when he went, because I 



How to go into Society 1 1 7 

had dropped asleep, did I not think him more dis- 
agreeable than ever? 

For all I can say, or anybody else can say, it 
will be the manner of some people to give up 
meeting other people socially. I am very sorry 
for them, but I cannot help it. All I can say is 
tjiat they will be sorry before they are done. I 
wish they would read ^Esop's fable about the old 
man and his sons and the bundle of rods. I wish 
they would find out definitely why God gave them 
tongues and lips and ears. I wish they would 
take to heart the folly of this constant struggle in 
which they live, against the whole law of the 
being of a gregarious animal like man. What is 
it that Westerly writes me, whose note comes to 
me from the mail just as I finish this paper? "I 
do not look for much advance in the world until 
we can get people out of their own self." And 
what do you hear me quoting to you all the time, 
— which you can never deny, 1 — but that "the 
human race is the individual of which men and 
women are so many different members"? You 
may kick against this law, but it is true. 

It is the truth around which, like a crystal 
round its nucleus, all modern civilization has 
taken order. 

1 From one of Fichte's Lectures. 



1 1 8 How to do It 

CHAPTER VIII 

HOW TO TRAVEL 

FIRST, as to manner. You may travel on foot, 
on horseback, in a carriage with horses, in a 
carriage with steam, or in a steamboat or ship, and 
also in many other ways. 

Of these, so far as mere outside circumstance 
goes, it is probable that the travelling with horses 
in a canal-boat is the pleasantest of all, granting 
that there is no crowd of passengers, and that the 
weather is agreeable. But there are so few parts 
of the world where this is now practicable, that 
we need not say much of it. The school-girls of 
this generation may well long for those old halcyon 
days of Miss Portia Lesley's School. In that ideal 
establishment the girls went to Washington to 
study political economy in the winter. They went 
to Saratoga in July and August to study the ana- 
lytical processes of Chemistry. There was also a 
course there on the history of the Revolution. 
They went to Newport alternate years in the same 
months, to study the Norse literature and swim- 
ming. They went to the White Sulphur Springs 
and to Bath, to study the history of chivalry as 
illustrated in the annual tournaments. They went 
to Paris to study French, to Rome to study Latin, 
to Athens to study Greek. In all parts of the 
world where they could travel by canals they did 



How to Travel 1 1 9 

so. While on the journeys they studied their 
arithmetic and other useful matters, which had 
been passed by at the capitals. And while they 
were on the canals they washed and ironed their 
clothes, so as to be ready for the next stopping- 
place. You can do anything you choose on a 
canal. 

Next to canal travelling, a journey on horse- 
back is the pleasantest. It is feasible for girls as 
well as boys, if they have proper escort and super- 
intendence. You see the country; you know 
every leaf and twig; you are tired enough, and 
not too tired, when the day is done. When you 
are at the end of each day's journey you find you 
have, all the way along, been laying up a store of 
pleasant memories. You have a good appetite for 
supper, and you sleep in one nap for the nine 
hours between nine at night and six in the morn- 
ing. 

You might try this, Theodora, — you and Robert. 
I do not think your little pony would do, but your 
uncle will lend you Throg for a fortnight. There 
is nothing your uncle will not do for you, if you 
ask him the right way. When Robert's next 
vacation comes, after he has been at home a week, 
he will be glad enough to start. You had better 
go now and see your Aunt Fanny about it. She is 
always up to anything. She and your Uncle 
John will be only too glad of the excuse to do this 
thing again. They have not done it since they 
and I and P. came down through the Dixville 



1 20 How to do It 

Notch all four on a hand gallop, with the rain run- 
ning in sheets off our waterproofs. Get them to 
say they will go, and then hold them up to it. 

For dress, you, Theodora, will want a regular 
bloomer to use when you are scrambling over the 
mountains on foot. Indeed, on the White Moun- 
tains now, the ladies best equipped ride up those 
steep pulls on men's saddles. For that work this 
is much the safest. Have a simple skirt to but- 
ton round your waist while you are riding. It 
should be of waterproof, — the English is the best. 
Besides this, have a short waterproof sack with a 
hood, which you can put on easily if a shower 
comes. Be careful that it has a hood. Any crev- 
ice between the head cover and the back cover 
which admits air or wet to the neck is misery, if 
not fatal, in such showers as you are going to ride 
through. Do not forget your gymnasium dress. 

You want another skirt for the evening, and this 
and your tooth-brush and linen must be put up 
tight and snug in two little bags. The old-fash- 
ioned saddle-bags will do nicely, if you can find a 
pair in the garret. The waterproof sack must be 
in another roll outside. 

As for Robert, I shall tell him nothing about his 
dress. " A true gentleman is always so dressed 
that' he can mount and ride for his life." That 
was the rule three hundred years ago, and I think 
it holds true now. 

Do not try to ride too much in one day. At 
the start, in particular, take care that you do not 



How to Travel 121 

tire your horses or yourselves. For yourselves, 
very likely ten miles will be enough for the first 
day. It is not distance you are after, it is the en- 
joyment of every blade of grass, of every flying 
bird, of every whiff of air, of every cloud that 
hangs upon the blue. 

Walking is next best. The difficulty is about 
baggage and sleeping-places ; and then there has 
been this absurd theory, that girls cannot walk. 
But they can. School-boys — trying to make 
immense distances — blister their feet, strain their 
muscles, get disgusted, borrow money, and ride 
home in the stage. But this is all nonsense. 
Distance, as in riding, is not the object. Five 
miles is as good as fifty. On the other hand, 
while the riding party cannot well be larger than 
four, the more the merrier on the walking party. 
It is true that the fare is sometimes better where 
there are but few. Any number of boys and girls, 
if they can coax some older persons to go with 
them, who can supply sense and direction to the 
high spirits of the juniors, may undertake such a 
journey. There are but few rules ; beyond them, 
each party may make its own. 

First, never walk before breakfast. If you like, 
you may make two breakfasts and take a mile or 
two between. But be sure to eat something be- 
fore you are on the road. 

Second, do not walk much in the middle of the 
day. It is dusty and hot then ; and the landscape 
has lost its special glory. By ten o'clock you 



122 How to do It 

ought to have found some camping-ground for 
the day: a nice brook running through a grove; 
a place to draw or paint or tell stories or read 
them or write them; a place to make waterfalls 
and dams, to sail chips or build boats; a place 
to make a fire and a cup of tea for the oldsters. 
Stay here till four in the afternoon, and then push 
on in the two or three hours which are left to the 
sleeping-place agreed upon. Four or five hours 
on the road is all you want in each day. Even 
resolute idlers, as it is to be hoped you all are on 
such occasions, can get eight miles a day out of 
that, — and that is enough for a true walking 
party. Remember all along that you are not 
running a race with the railway train. If you 
were, you would be beaten certainly ; and the less 
you think you are, the better. You are travelling 
in a method of which the merit is that it is not 
fast, and that you see every separate detail of the 
glory of the world. What a fool you are, then, if 
you tire yourself to death, merely that you may 
say that you did in ten hours what the locomotive 
would gladly have finished in one, if by that effort 
you have lost exactly the enjoyment of nature and 
society that you started for. 

The perfection of undertakings in this line was 
Mrs. Merriam's famous walking party in the Green 
Mountains, with the Wadsworth girls. Wads- 
worth was not their name, — it was the name of 
her school. She chose eight of the girls when 
vacation came, and told them they might get 



How to Travel 123 

leave, if they could, to join her in Brattleborough 
for this tramp. And she sent her own invitation 
to the mothers and to as many brothers. Six of 
the girls came. Clara Ingham was one of them, 
and she told me all about it. Maud Ingletree and 
Esther were there. There were six brothers also 
and Archie Muldair and his wife, Fanny Muldair's 
mother. They two " tended out " in a buggy, but 
did not do much walking. Mr. Merriam was with 
them, and, quite as a surprise, they had Thur- 
lessen, a nice old Swede, who had served in the 
army, and had ever since been attached to that 
school as chore-man. At home he blacked the 
girls' shoes, waited for them at concert, and 
sometimes, for a slight bribe, bought almond 
candy for them in school hours, when they could 
not possibly live till afternoon without a supply. 
The girls said that the reason the war lasted so 
long w r as that Old Thurlessen was in the army, 
and that nothing ever went quick when he was in 
it. I believe there was something in this. Well, 
Old Thurlessen had a canvas-top wagon, in which 
he carried five tents, five or six trunks, one or 
two pieces of kitchen gear, his own self, and Will 
Corcoran. 

The girls and boys did not so much as know 
that Thurlessen was in the party. That had all 
been kept a solemn secret. They did not know 
how their trunks were going on, but started on 
foot in the morning from the hotel, passed up that 
beautiful village street in Brattleborough, came 



1 24 How to do It 

out through West Dummerston, and so along that 
lovely West River. It was very easy to find a 
camp there, and when the sun came to be a little 
hot, and they had all blown off a little of the 
steam of the morning, I think they were all glad 
to come upon Mr. Muldair, sitting in the wagon 
waiting for them. He explained to them that, if 
they would cross the fence and go down to the 
river, they would rind his wife had planted her- 
self; and there, sure enough, in a lovely little 
nook, round which the river swept, with rocks and 
trees for shade, with shawls to lounge upon, and 
the water to play with, they spent the day. Of 
course they made long excursions into the woods 
and up and down the stream, but here was head- 
quarters. Hard-boiled eggs from the haversacks, 
with bread and butter, furnished forth the meal, 
and Mr. Muldair insisted on toasting some salt- 
pork over the fire, and teaching the girls to like 
it sandwiched between crackers. Well, at four 
o'clock everybody was ready to start again, and 
was willing to walk briskly. And at six, what 
should they see but the American flag flying, and 
Thurlessen's pretty little encampment of his five 
tents, pitched in a horseshoe form, with his wagon, 
as a sort of commissary's tent, just outside. Two 
tents were for the girls, two tents for the boys, 
and the headquarters tent for Mr. and Mrs. Mer- 
riam. And that night they all learned the luxury 
and sweetness of sleeping upon beds of hemlock 
branches. Thurlessen had supper all ready as 



How to Travel 125 

soon as they were washed and ready for it. And 
after supper they sat round the fire a little while 
singing. But before nine o'clock every one of 
them was asleep. 

So they fared up and down through those lovely 
valleys of the Green Mountains, sending Thur- 
lessen on about ten miles every day, to be ready 
for them when night came. If it rained, of course 
they could put in to some of those hospitable Ver- 
mont farmers' homes, or one of the inns in the 
villages. But, on the whole, they had good 
weather, and boys and girls always hoped that 
they might sleep out-doors. 

These are, however, but the variations and 
amusements of travel. You and I would rind it 
hard to walk to Liverpool, if that happened to be 
the expedition in hand or on foot. And in ninety- 
nine cases out of a hundred you and I will have to 
adapt ourselves to the methods of travel which the 
majority have agreed upon. 

But for pleasure travel, in whatever form, much 
of what has been said already applies. The best 
party is two, the next best four, the next best one, 
and the worst three. Beyond four, except in 
walking parties, all are impossible, unless they be 
members of one family under the command of a 
father or mother. Command is essential when you 
pass four. All the members of the party should 
have or should make a community of interests. 
If one draws, all had best draw. If one likes to 
climb mountains, all had best climb mountains. 



126 How to do It 

If one rises early, all had best rise early ; and so 
on. Do not tell me you cannot draw. It is quite 
time you did. You are your own best teacher. 
And there is no time or place so fit for learning 
as when you are sitting under the shade of a 
high rock on the side of Whiteface, or looking 
off into the village street from the piazza of a 
hotel. 

The party once determined on and the route, re- 
member that the old conditions of travel and the 
new conditions of most travel of to-day are pre- 
cisely opposite. For in old travel, as on horse- 
back or on foot now, you saw the country while 
you travelled. Many of your stopping-places 
were for rest, or because night had fallen, and you 
could see nothing at night. Under the old sys- 
tem, therefore, an intelligent traveller might keep 
in motion from day to day, slowly, indeed, but 
seeing something all the time, and learning what 
the country was through which he passed by talk 
with the people. But in the new system, popu- 
larly called the improved system, he is shut up 
with his party and a good many other parties in 
a tight box with glass windows, and whirled on 
through dust if it be dusty, or rain if it be rainy, 
under arrangements which make it impossible to 
converse with the people of the country, and al- 
most impossible to see what that country is. 
There is a little conversation with the natives. 
But it relates mostly to the price of pond-lilies 
or of crullers or of native diamonds. I once put 



How to Travel 127 

my head out of a window in Ashland, and, ad- 
dressing a crowd of boys promiscuously, called 
" John, John." John stepped forward, as I had 
felt sure he would, though I had not before had 
the pleasure of his acquaintance. I asked how 
his mother was, and how the other children were, 
and he said they were very well. But he did not 
say anything else, and as the train started at that 
moment I was not able to continue the conversa- 
tion, which was at the best, you see, conducted 
under difficulties. 

All this makes it necessary that, in our modern 
travelling, you select with particular care your 
places to rest, and when you have selected them, 
that you stay in them, at the least one day, that 
you may rest, and that you may know something 
of the country you are passing. A man or a 
strong woman may go from Boston to Chicago 
in a little more than twenty-five hours. If he be 
going because he has to, it is best for him to go in 
that way, because he is out of his misery the 
sooner. Just so it is better to be beheaded than 
to be starved to death. But a party going from 
Boston to Chicago purely on an expedition of 
pleasure, ought not to advance more than a hundred 
miles a day, and might well spend twenty hours 
out of every twenty-four at well-chosen stopping- 
places on the way. They would avoid all large 
cities, which are for a short stay exactly alike and 
equally uncomfortable ; they would choose pleas- 
ant places for rest, and thus when they arrived at 



128 How to do It 

Chicago they would have a real fund of happy, 
pleasant memories. 

Applying the same principle to travel in Europe, 
I am eager to correct a mistake which many of 
you will be apt to make at the beginning, — hot- 
blooded young Americans as you are, eager to 
" put through "what you are at, even though it 
be the most exquisite of enjoyments, and ignorant 
as you all are, till you are taught, of the possibili- 
ties of happy life before you, if you will only let 
the luscious pulp of your various bananas lie on 
your tongue and take all the good of it, instead 
of bolting life as if it were nauseous medicine. 
Because you have but little time in Europe, you 
will be anxious to see all you can. That is quite 
right. Remember, then, that true wisdom is to 
stay three days in one place, rather than to spend 
but one day in each of three. If you insist on 
one day in Oxford, one in Birmingham, one in 
Bristol, why then there are three inns or hotels 
to be hunted up, three packings and unpackings, 
three sets of letters to be presented, three sets of 
streets to learn, and, after it is all over, your mem- 
ories of those three places will be merely of the 
outside misery of travel. Give up two of them 
altogether, then. Make yourself at home for the 
three days in whichever place of the three best 
pleases you. Sleep till your nine hours are up 
every night. Breakfast all together. Avail your- 
selves of your letters of introduction. See things 
which are to be seen, or persons who are to be 



How to Travel 129 

known, at the right times. Above all, see twice 
whatever is worth seeing. Do not forget this 
rule; — we remember what we see twice. It is 
that stereoscopic memory of which I told you 
before. We do not remember with anything like 
the same reality or precision what we have only 
seen once. It is in some slight appreciation of 
this great fundamental rule, that you stay three 
days in any place which you really mean to be ac- 
quainted with, that Miss Ferrier lays down her 
bright rule for a visit, that a visit ought " to con- 
sist of three days, — the rest day, the drest day, 
and the pressed day." 

And, lastly, dear friends, — for the most enter- 
taining of discourses on the most fascinating of 
themes must have a " lastly," — lastly, be sure 
that you know what you travel for. " Why, we 
travel to have a good time," says that incorrigible 
Pauline Ingham, who will talk none but the 
Yankee language. Dear Pauline, if you go about 
the world expecting to find that same " good 
time " of yours ready-made, inspected, branded, 
stamped, jobbed by the jobbers, retailed by the 
retailers, and ready for you to buy with your 
spending-money, you will be sadly mistaken, 
though you have for spending-money all that 
united health, high spirits, good-nature, and kind 
heart of yours, and all papa's lessons of forget- 
ting yesterday, leaving to-morrow alone, and liv- 
ing with all your might to-day. It will never do, 
Pauline, to have to walk up to the innkeeper and 

9 



130 How to do It 

say, " Please, we have come for a good time, and 
where shall we find it? " Take care that you have 
in reserve one object, I do not care much what it 
is. Be ready to press plants, or be ready to col- 
lect minerals. Or be ready to wash in water-colors, 
I do not care how poor they are. Or, in Europe, 
be ready to inquire about the libraries, or the 
baby-nurseries, or the art-collections, or the bo- 
tanical gardens. Understand in your own mind 
that there is something you can inquire for and be 
interested in, though you be dumped out of a car 
at New Smithville. It may, perhaps, happen that 
you do not for weeks or months revert to this 
reserved object of yours. Then happiness may 
come ; for, as you have found out already, I think, 
happiness is something which happens, and is not 
contrived. On this theme you will find an excel- 
lent discourse in the beginning of Mr. Freeman 
Clarke's "Eleven Weeks in Europe." 

For directions for the detail of travel, there are 
none better than those in the beginning of " Rollo 
in Europe." There is much wisdom in the gen- 
eral directions to travellers in the prefaces to the 
old editions of Murray. A young American will 
of course eliminate the purely English necessities 
from both sides of those equations. There is a 
good article by Dr. Bellows on the matter in the 
North American Review. And you yourself, after 
you have been forty-eight hours in Europe, will 
feel certain that you can write better directions 
than all the rest of us can, put together. 



How to Travel 131 

And, so my dear young friends, the first half of 
this book comes to an end. The programme of 
the beginning is finished, and I am to say " Good- 
by." If I have not answered all the nice, intelli- 
gent letters which one and another of you have 
sent me since we began together, it has only been 
because I thought I could better answer the mul- 
titude of such unknown friends in print, than a 
few in shorter notes of reply. It has been to me 
a charming thing that so many of you have been 
tempted to break through the magic circle of the 
printed pages, and come to closer terms with one 
who has certainly tried to speak as a friend to all 
of you. Do we all understand that in talking, 
in reading, in writing, in going into society, in 
choosing our books, or in travelling, there is no 
arbitrary set of rules? The commandments are 
not carved in stone. We shall do these things 
rightly if we do them simply and unconsciously, if 
we are not selfish, if we are willing to profit by other 
people's experience, and if, as we do them, we can 
manage to remember that right and wrong depend 
much more on the spirit than on the manner in 
which the thing is done. We shall not make many 
blunders if we live by the four rules they painted 
on the four walls of the Detroit Club-house. 

Do not you know what those were? 

1. Look up, and not down. 

2. Look forward, and not backward. 

3. Look out, and not in. 

4. Lend a hand. 



132 How to do It 

The next half of the book will be the applica- 
tion of these rules to life in school, in vacation, 
life together, life alone, and some other details not 
yet touched upon. 



CHAPTER IX 

LIFE AT SCHOOL 

I DO not mean life at a boarding-school. If I speak 
of that, it is to be at another time. No, I mean life 
at a regular every-day school, in town or in the 
country, where you go in the morning and come 
away at eleven or at noon, and go again in the 
afternoon and come away after two or three hours. 
Some young people hate this life, and some like it 
tolerably well. I propose to give some information 
which shall make it more agreeable all round. 

And I beg it may be understood that I do not 
appear as counsel for either party, in the instruc- 
tion and advice I give. That means that, as the 
lawyers say, I am not retained by the teachers, 
formerly called schoolmistresses and school- 
masters, or by the pupils, formerly called boys 
and girls. I have been a schoolmaster myself, and 
I enjoyed the life very much, and made among 
my boys some of the best of the friends of my 
life. I have also been a school-boy, — and I 
roughed through my school life with comparative 
comfort and ease. As master and as boy I learned 



Life at School 133 

some things which I think can be explained to 
boys and girls now, so as to make life at school 
easier and really more agreeable. 
My first rule is, that you 

Accept the Situation. 

Perhaps you do not know what that means. It 
means that, as you are at school, whether you 
really like going or not, you determine to make 
the very best you can of it, and that you do not 
make yourself and everybody else wretched by 
sulking and grumbling about it, and wishing 
school was done, and wondering why your father 
sends you there, and asking leave to look at the 
clock in the other room, and so on. 

When Dr. Kane or Captain McClure was lying 
on a skin on a field of ice, in a blanket bag 
buttoned over his head, with three men one side of 
him and three the other, and a blanket over them 
all, — with the temperature seventy-eight degrees 
below zero, and daylight a month and a half away, 
the position was by no means comfortable. But a 
brave man does not growl or sulk in such a posi- 
tion. He " accepts the situation." That is, he 
takes that as a thing for granted, about which 
there is to be no further question. Then he is in 
condition to make the best of it, whatever that 
best may be. He can sing " We won't go home 
till morning," or he can tell the men the story of 
William Fitzpatrick and the Belgian coffee-grinder, 
or he can say " good-night " and imagine himself 



134 How to do It 

among the Kentish hop-fields, — till before he 
knows it the hop-sticks begin walking round and 
round, and the haycocks to make faces at him, — 
and — and — and — he — he — he is fast asleep. 
That comfort comes of " accepting the situation." 

Now here you are at school, I will say, for three 
hours. Accept the situation like a man or a 
woman, and do not sulk like a fool. As Mr. 
Abbott says, in his admirable rule, in Rollo or 
Jonas, " When you grant, grant cheerfully." You 
have come here to school without a fight, I sup- 
pose. When your father told you to come, you 
did not insult him, as people do in very poor plays 
and very cheap novels. You did not say to him, 
" Miscreant and villain, I renounce thee, I defy 
thee to the teeth ; I am none of thine, and hence- 
forth I leave thee in thy low estate." You did not 
leap in the middle of the night from a three-story 
window, with your best clothes in a handkerchief, 
and go and assume the charge of a pirate clipper, 
which was lying hidden in a creek in the Back Bay. 
On the contrary, you went to school when the 
time came. As you have done so, determine, first 
of all, to make the very best of it. The best can 
be made first-rate. But a great deal depends on 
you in making it so. 

To make the whole thing thoroughly attractive, 
to make the time pass quickly, and to have school 
life a natural part of your other life, my second 
rule is, 

DO WHAT YOU DO WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT. 



Life at School 135 

It is a good rule in anything; in sleeping, in 
playing, or in whatever you have in hand. But 
nothing tends to make school time pass quicker ; 
and the great point, as I will acknowledge, is to 
get through with the school hours as quickly as 
we fairly can. 

Now, if in written arithmetic, for instance, you 
will start instantly on the sums as soon as they are 
given out; if you will bear on hard on the pencil, 
so as to make clear white marks, instead of greasy, 
flabby pale ones on the slate ; if you will rule the 
columns for the answers as carefully as if it were 
a bank ledger you were ruling, or if you will wash 
the slate so completely that no vestige of old work 
is there, you will find that the mere exercise of 
energy of manner infuses spirit and correctness 
into the thing done. 

I remember my drawing-teacher once snapped 
the top of my pencil with his forefinger, gently, 
and it flew across the room. He laughed and 
said, " How can you expect to draw a firm line 
with a pencil held like that ? " It was a good 
lesson, and it illustrates this rule, — " Do with all 
your might the work that is to be done." 

When I was at school at the old Latin School 
in Boston, — opposite where Ben Franklin went to 
school and where his statue is now, — in the same 
spot in space where you eat your lunch if you go 
into the ladies' eating-room at Parker's Hotel, — 
when I was at school there, I say, things were in 
that semi-barbarous state that with a school 



136 How to do It 

attendance of four hours in the morning and 
three in the afternoon, we had but five minutes' 
recess in the morning and five in the afternoon. 
We went " out " in divisions of eight or ten each ; 
and the worst of all was that the playground (now 
called so) was a sort of platform, of which one half 
was under cover, — all of which was, I suppose, 
sixteen feet long by six wide, with high walls, and 
stairs leading to it. 

Of course we could have sulked away all our 
recess there, complaining that we had no better 
place. Instead of which, we accepted the situa- 
tion, we made the best of it, and with all our 
might entered on the one amusement possible 
in such quarters. 

We provided a stout rope, well knotted. As 
soon as recess began, we divided into equal par- 
ties, one under cover and the other out, grasping 
the rope, and endeavoring each to draw the other 
party across the dividing line. "Greeks and Tro- 
jans" you will see the game called in English 
books. Little we knew of either; but we hard- 
ened our hands, toughened our muscles, and exer- 
cised our chests, arms, and legs much better than 
could have been expected, all by accepting the 
situation and doing with all our might what our 
hands found to do. 

Lessons are set for average boys at school, — 
boys of the average laziness. If you really go 
to work with all your might then, you get a good 
deal of loose time, which, in general, you can ap- 



Life at School 137 

ply to that standing nuisance the "evening lesson." 
Sometimes, I know, for what reason I do not know, 
this study of the evening lesson in school is pro- 
hibited. When it is, the good boys and quick boys 
have to learn how to waste their extra time, which 
seems to be a pity. But with a sensible master, 
it is a thing understood, that it is better for boys 
or girls to study hard while they study, and never 
to learn to dawdle. Taking it for granted that you 
are in the hands of such masters or mistresses, I 
will take it for granted that, when you have learned 
the school lesson, there will be no objection to your 
next learning the other lesson, which lazier boys 
will have to carry home. 

Lastly, you will find you gain a great deal by 
giving to the school lesson all the color and light 
which every-day affairs can lend to it. Do not let 
it be a ghastly skeleton in a closet, but let it come 
as far as it will into daily life. When you read in 
Colburn's Oral Arithmetic, " that a man bought 
mutton at six cents a pound, and beef at seven," 
ask your mother what she pays a pound now, and 
do the sum with the figures changed. When the 
boys come back after vacation, find out where they 
have been, and look out Springfield, and the Notch, 
and Dead River, and Moosehead Lake, on the map, 
— and know where they are. When you get a 
chance at the Republican before the others have 
come down to breakfast, read the Vermont news, 
under the separate head of that State, and find out 
how many of those Vermont towns are on your 



138 How to do It 

" Mitchell." When it is your turn to speak, do not 
be satisfied with a piece from the " Speaker," that 
all the boys have heard a hundred times; but get 
something out of the Tribune, or the Compan- 
ion, or Young Folks, or from the new " Tennyson " 
at home. 

I once went to examine a high school, on a 
lonely hillside in a lonely country town. The first 
class was in botany, and they rattled off from the 
book very fast. They said " cotyledon," and " syn- 
genesious," and " coniferous," and such words, re- 
markably well, considering they did not care two 
straws about them. Well, when it was my turn to 
" make a few remarks," I said, — 

" Huckleberry." 

I do not remember another word I said, but I 
do remember the sense of amazement that a min- 
ister should have spoken such a wicked word in a 
school-room. What was worse, I sent a child out 
to bring in some unripe huckleberries from the 
roadside, and we went to work on our botany to 
some purpose. 

My dear children, I see hundreds of boys who 
can tell me what is thirteen seventeenths of two 
elevenths of five times one half of a bushel of 
wheat, stated in pecks, quarts, and pints ; and yet 
if I showed them a grain of wheat and a grain of 
unhulled rice and a grain of barley, they would 
not know which was which. Try not to let your 
school life sweep you wholly away from the home 
life of every day. 



Life in Vacation 139 



CHAPTER X 

LIFE IN VACATION 

How well I remember my last vacation ! I knew 
it was my last, and I did not lose one instant of it. 
Six weeks of unalloyed ! 

True, after school days are over, people have 
what are called vacations. Your father takes his 
at the store, and Uncle William has the " long 
vacation," when the Court does not sit. But a 
man's vacation, or a woman's, is as nothing when 
it is compared with a child's or a young man's or 
a young woman's home from school. For papa 
and Uncle William are carrying about a set of 
cares with them all the time. They cannot help 
it, and they carry them bravely, but they carry 
them all the same. So you see a vacation for 
men and women is generally a vacation with its 
weight of responsibility. But your vacations, while 
3'ou are at school, though they have their respon- 
sibilities, indeed, have none under which you 
ought not to walk off as cheerfully as Gretchen, 
there, walks down the road with that pail of milk 
upon her head. I hope you will learn to do that 
some day, my dear Fanchon. 

Hear, then, the essential laws of vacation: — 

First of all, 

DO NOT GET INTO OTHER PEOPLE'S WAY. 



140 How to do It 

Horace and Enoch would not have made such a 
mess of it last summer, and got so utterly into 
disgrace, if they could only have kept this rule in 
mind. But, from mere thoughtlessness, they were 
making people wish they were at the North Pole 
all the time, and it ended in their wishing that 
they were there themselves. 

Thus, the very first morning after they had come 
home from Leicester Academy, — and, indeed, they 
had been welcomed with all the honors only the 
night before, — when Margaret, the servant, came 
down into the kitchen, she found her fire lighted, 
indeed, but there were no thanks to Master Enoch 
for that. The boys were going out gunning that 
morning, and they had taken it into their heads 
that the two old fowling-pieces needed to be thor- 
oughly washed out, and with hot water. So they 
had got up, really at half-past four ; had made the 
kitchen fire themselves ; had put on ten times as 
much water as they wanted, so it took an age to 
boil; had got tired waiting, and raked out some 
coals and put on some more water in a skillet; 
had upset this over the hearth, and tried to wipe 
it up with the cloth that lay over Margaret's 
bread-cakes as they were rising; had meanwhile 
taken the guns to pieces, and laid the pieces 
on the kitchen table ; had piled up their oily 
cloths on the settle and on the chairs ; had spilled 
oil from the lamp-filler, in trying to drop some 
into one of the ramrod sockets, and thus, by the 
time Margaret did come down, her kitchen and 
her breakfast both were in a very bad way. 



Life in Vacation 141 

Horace said, when he was arraigned, that he 
had thought they should be all through before 
half past-five ; that then they would have " cleared 
up," and have been well across the pasture, out 
of Margaret's way. Horace did not know that 
watched pots are " mighty unsartin " in their times 
of boiling. 

Now all this row, leading to great unpopularity 
of the boys in regions where they wanted to be 
conciliatory, would have been avoided if Horace 
and Enoch had merely kept out of the way. There 
were the Kendal-house in the back-yard, or the 
wood-shed, where they could have cleaned the 
guns, and then nobody would have minded if 
they had spilled ten quarts of water. 

This seems like a minor rule. But I have put 
it first, because a good deal of comfort or discom- 
fort hangs on it. 

Scientifically, the first rule would be, 

Save Time. 

This can only be done by system. A vacation is 
gold, you see, if properly used ; it is distilled gold, 
— if there could be such, — to be correct, it is 
burnished, double-refined gold, or gold purified. 
It cannot be lengthened. There is sure to be too 
little of it. So you must make sure of all there 
is ; and this requires system. 

It requires, therefore, that, first of all, — even 
before the term time is over, — you all deter- 
mine very solemnly what the great central busi- 



142 How to do It 

ness of the vacation shall be. Shall it be an 
archery club? Or will we build the Falcon's 
Nest in the buttonwood over on the Strail? Or 
shall it be some other sport or entertainment? 

Let this be decided with great care ; and, once 
decided, hang to this determination, doing some- 
thing determined about it every living day. In 
truth, I recommend application to that business 
with a good deal of firmness, on every day, rain 
or shine, even at certain fixed hours ; unless, of 
course, there is some general engagement of the 
family or of the neighborhood which interferes. 
If you are all going on a lily party, why, that will 
take precedence. 

Then I recommend that, quite distinct from 
this, you make up your own personal and separate 
mind as to what is the thing which you yourself 
have most hungered and thirsted for in the last 
term, but have not been able to do to your mind, 
because the school work interfered so badly. 
Some such thing, I have no doubt, there is. You 
wanted to make some electrotype medals, as good 
as that first-rate one that Muldair copied when he 
lived in Paxton. Or you want to make some 
plaster casts. Or you want to read some par- 
ticular book or books. Or you want to use John's 
tool-box for some very definite and attractive pur- 
pose. Very well ; take this up also, for your indi- 
vidual or special business. The other is the busi- 
ness of the crowd; this is your avocation when 
you are away from the crowd. I say away; I 



Life in Vacation 143 

mean it is something you can do without having 
to hunt them up, and coax them to go on with 
you. 

Besides these, of course there is all the home 
life. You have the garden to work in. You can 
help your mother wash the tea things. You can 
make cake, if you keep on the blind side of old 
Rosamond ; and so on. 

Thus you are triply armed. Indeed, I know no 
life which gets on well, unless it has these three 
sides, whether life with the others, life by yourself, 
or such life as may come without any plan or effort 
of your own. 

No ; I do not know which of these things you 
will choose, — perhaps you will choose none of 
them. But it is easy enough to see how fast 
a day of vacation .will go by if you, Stephen, 
or you, Clara, have these several resources or 
determinations. 

Here is the ground-plan of it, as I might steal 
it from Fanchon's journals : — 

" Tuesday. — Second day of vacation. Fair. Wind 
west. Thermometer sixty-three degrees, before 
breakfast. 

"Downstairs in time." \Mem. 1. Be careful about 
this. It makes much more disturbance in the house- 
hold than you think for, if you are late to breakfast, 
and it sets back the day terribly.] 

"Wiped while Sarah washed. Herbert read us the 
new number of Tig and Tag, while we did this, and 
made us scream, by acting it with Silas, behind the 



144 How to do It 

sofa and on the chairs. At nine, all was done, and we 
went up the pasture to Mont Blanc. Worked all the 
morning on the drawbridge. We have got the two 
large logs into place, and have dug out part of the 
trench. Home at one, quite tired." 

[Mem. 2. Mont Blanc is a great boulder, — part of a 
park of boulders, in the edge of the wood-lot. Other 
similar rocks are named the " Jungfrau," because un- 
climbable, the "Aiguilles," &c. This about the draw- 
bridge and logs, readers will understand as well as I 
do.] 

" Had just time to dress for dinner. Mr. Links, or 
Lynch, was here ; a very interesting man, who has de- 
scended an extinct volcano. He is going to give me 
some Pele's hair. I think I shall make a museum. 
After dinner we all sat on the piazza some time, till he 
went away. Then I came up here, and fixed my 
drawers. I have moved my bed to the other side of the 
chamber. This gives me a great deal more room. Then 
I got out my palette, and washed it, and my colors. I 
am going to paint a cluster of grape-leaves for mamma's 
birthday. It is a great secret I had only got the 
things well out, when the Fosdicks came and proposed 
we should all ride over with them to Worcester, where 
Houdin the juggler was. Such a splendid time as we 
have had ! How he does some of the things I do not 
know. I brought home a flag and three great pepper- 
mints for Pet. We did not get home till nearly eleven." 

[Mem. 3. This is pretty late for young people of 
your age ; but, as Madame Roland said, a good deal has 
to be pardoned to the spirit of liberty ; and, so far as I 
have observed, in this time, generally is.] 



Life Alone 145 

Now, if you will analyze that bit of journal, you 
will see, first, that the day is full of what Mr. 
Clough calls 

" The joy of eventful living." 

That girl never will give anybody cause to say 
she is tired of her vacations, if she can spend them 
in that fashion. You will see, next, that it is all 
in system, and, as it happens, just on the system I 
proposed. For you will observe that there is the 
great plan, with others, of the fortress, the draw- 
bridge, and all that ; there is the separate plan for 
Fanchon's self, of the water-color picture ; and, 
lastly, there is the unplanned surrender to the 
accident of the Fosdicks coming round to propose 
Houdin. 

Will you observe, lastly, that Fanchon is not 
selfish in these matters, but lends a hand where 
she finds an opportunity? 



CHAPTER XI 

LIFE ALONE 

When I was a very young man, I had occasion to 
travel two hundred miles down the valley of the 
Connecticut River. I had just finished a delight- 
ful summer excursion in the service of the State 
of New Hampshire as a geologist, and I left the 
other geological surveyors at Haverhill. » 

TO 



146 How to do It 

I remembered John Ledyard. Do you, dear 
Young America? John Ledyard, having deter- 
mined to leave Dartmouth College, built himself 
a boat, or digged for himself a canoe, and sailed 
down on the stream reading the Greek Testament, 
or " Plutarch's Lives," I forget which, on the way. 

Here was I, about to go down the same river. 
I had ten dollars in my pocket, be the same more 
or less. Could not I buy a boat for seven, my 
provant for a week for three more, and so arrive 
in Springfield in ten days' time, go up to the 
Hardings' and spend the night, and go down to 
Boston, on a free pass I had, the next day? 

Had I been as young as I am now, I should 
have done that thing. I wanted to do it then, 
but there were difficulties. 

First, whatever was to be done must be done 
at once. For, if I were delayed only a day at 
Haverhill, I should have, when I had paid my 
bill, but eight dollars and a half left. Then how 
buy the provant for three dollars, and the boat 
for six? 

So I went at once to the seaport or maritime 
district of that flourishing town, to find, to my 
dismay, that there was no boat, canoe, dug-out, 
or bateau, — there was nothing. As I remember 
things now, there was not any sort of coffin that 
would ride the waves in any sort of way. 

There were, however, many pundits, or learned 
men. They are a class of people I have always 
found in places or occasions where something 



1 



Life Alone 147 

besides learning was needed. They tried, as is 
the fashion of their craft, to make good the lack 
of boats by advice. 

First, they proved that it would have been of 
no use had there been any boats. Second, they 
proved that no one ever had gone down from 
Haverhill in a boat at that season of the year, — 
ergo, that no one ought to think of going. Third, 
they proved, what I knew very well before, that 
I could go down much quicker in the stage. 
Fourth, with astonishing unanimity they agreed, 
that, if I would only go down as far as Hanover, 
there would be plenty of boats; the river would 
have more water in it; I should be past this fall 
and that fall, this rapid and that rapid ; and, in 
short, that, before the worlds were, it seemed pre- 
destined that I should start from Hanover. 

All this they said in that seductive way in 
which a dry-goods clerk tells you that he has no 
checked gingham, and makes you think you are a 
fool that you asked for checked gingham; that 
you never should have asked, least of all, should 
have asked him. 

So I left the beach at Haverhill, disconcerted, 
disgraced, conscious of my own littleness and 
folly, and, as I was bid, took passage in the Tele- 
graph coach for Hanover, giving orders that I 
should be called in the morning. 

I was called in the morning. I mounted the 
stage-coach, and I think we came to Hanover 
about half-past ten, — my first and last visit at that 



148 How to do It 

shrine of learning. Pretty hot it was on the top 
of the coach, and I was pretty tired, and a good 
deal chafed as I saw from that eyry the lovely, cool 
river all the way at my side. I took some courage 
when I saw White's dam and Brown's dam, or 
Smith's dam and Jones's dam, or whatever the 
dams were, and persuaded myself that it would 
have been hard work hauling round them. 

Nathless, I was worn and weary when I arrived 
at Hanover, and was told there would be an hour 
before the Telegraph went forward. Again I 
hurried to the strand. 

This time I found a boat. A poor craft it was, 
but probably as good as Ledyard's. Leaky, but 
could be calked. Destitute of row-locks, but they 
could be made. 

I found the owner. Yes, he would sell her to 
me. Nay, he was not particular about price. 
Perhaps he knew that she was not worth any- 
thing. But, with that loyalty to truth, not to say 
pride of opinion, which is a part of the true New- 
Englander's life, this sturdy man said, frankly, 
that he did not want to sell her, because he did 
not think I ought to go that way. 

Vain for me to represent that that was my 
affair, and not his. 

Clearly he thought it was his. Did he think I 
was a boy who had escaped from parental care ? 

Perhaps. For at that age I had not this mus- 
tache or these whiskers. 

Had he, in the Laccadive Islands, some worth- 



Life Alone 149 

less son who had escaped from home to go a 
whaling? Did he wish in his heart that some 
other shipmaster had hindered him, as he now 
was hindering me? Alas, I know not! Only 
this I know, that he advised me, argued with me, 
nay, begged me not to go that way. I should get 
aground. I should be upset. The boat would be 
swamped. Much better go by the Telegraph. 

Dear reader, I was young in life, and I accepted 
the reiterated advice, and took the Telegraph. It 
was one of about four prudent things which I 
have done in my life, which I can remember now, 
all of which I regret at this moment. 

Now, why did I give up a plan, at the solicita- 
tion of an utter stranger, which I had formed 
intelligently, and had looked forward to with 
pleasure? Was I afraid of being drowned? Not 
I. Hard to drown in the upper Connecticut the 
boy who had for weeks been swimming three 
times a day in that river and in every lake or 
stream in upper or central New Hampshire. Was 
I afraid of wetting my clothes? Not I. Hard 
to hurt with water the clothes in which I had 
slept on the top of Mt. Washington, swam the 
Ammonoosuc, or sat out a thunder-shower on 
Mt. Jefferson. 

Dear boys and girls, I was, by this time, afraid 
of myself. I was afraid of being alone. 

This is a pretty long text. But it is the text 
for this paper. You see I had had this four or 
five hours' pull down on the hot stage-coach. I 



150 How to do It 

had been conversing with myself all the time, 
and I had not found it the best of company. I 
was quite sure that the voyage would cost a week. 
Maybe it would cost more. And I was afraid 
that I should be very tired of it and of myself 
before the thing was done. So I meekly returned 
to the Telegraph, faintly tried the same experi- 
ment at Windsor for the last time, and then took 
the Telegraph for the night, and brought up next 
day at Greenfield. 

Can I, perhaps, give some hints to you, boys 
and girls, which will save you from such a mis- 
take as I made then? 

I do not pretend that you should court solitude. 
That is all nonsense, though there is a good deal 
of it in the books, as there is of other nonsense. 
You are made for society, for converse, sympathy, 
and communion. Tongues are made to talk, and 
ears are made to listen. So are eyes made to see. 
Yet night falls sometimes, when you cannot see. 
And, as you ought not to be afraid of night, you 
ought not to be afraid of solitude, when you cannot 
talk or listen. 

What is there, then, that we can do when 
we are alone? 

Many things. Of which now it will be enough 
to speak a little in detail of five. We can think, 
we can read, we can write, we can draw, we can 
sing. Of these we will speak separately. Of the 
rest I will say a word, and hardly more. 

First, we can think. And there are some places 



Life Alone 151 

where we can do nothing else. In a railway car- 
riage, for instance, on a rainy or a frosty day, you 
cannot see the country. If you are without com- 
panions, you cannot talk, — ought not, indeed, 
talk much, if you had them. You ought not read, 
because reading in the train puts your eyes out, 
sooner or later. You cannot write. And in most 
trains the usages are such that you cannot sing. 
Or, when they sing in trains, the whole company 
generally sings, so that rules for solitude no longer 
apply. 

What can you do, then ? You can think. Learn 
to think carefully, regularly, so as to think with 
pleasure. 

I know some young people who had two or 
three separate imaginary lives, which they took 
up on such occasions. One was a supposed life 
in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Robert 
used to plan the whole house and grounds ; just 
what horses he would keep, what hounds, what 
cows, and other stock. He planned all the 
neighbors' houses, and who should live in them. 
There were the Fairfaxes, very nice, but rather 
secesh; and the Sydneys, who had been loyal 
through and through. There was that plucky 
Frank Fairfax, and that pretty Blanche Sydney. 
Then there were riding parties, archery parties, 
picnics on the river, expeditions to the Natural 
Bridge, and once a year a regular " meet " for a 
fox-hunt. 

" Springfield, twenty-five minutes for refresh- 



152 How to do It 

ments," says the conductor, and Robert is left to 
take up his history some other time. 

It is a very good plan to have not simply 
stories on hand, as he had, but to be ready to 
take up the way to plan your garden, the ar- 
rangement of your books, the order of next year's 
Reading Club, or any other truly good subjects 
which have been laid by for systematic thinking, 
the first time you are alone. Bear this in mind as 
you read. If you had been General Sullivan, at 
the battle of Brandywine, you are not quite cer- 
tain whether you would have done as he did. No? 
Well, then, keep that for a nut to crack the first 
time you have to be alone. What would you have 
done? 

This matter of being prepared to think is really 
a pretty important matter, if you find some night 
that you have to watch with a sick friend. You 
must not read, write, or talk there. But you must 
keep awake. Unless you mean to have the time 
pass dismally slow, you must have your regular 
topics to think over, carefully and squarely. 

An imaginary conversation, such as Madame de 
Genlis describes, is an excellent resource at such a 
time. 

Many and many a time, as I have been grinding 
along at night on some railway in the Middle 
States, when it was too early to sleep, and too 
late to look at the scenery, have I called into 
imaginary council a circle of the nicest people in 
the world. 



Life Alone 153 

"Let me suppose," I would say to myself, "that 
we were all at Mrs. Tileston's in the front parlor, 
where the light falls so beautifully on the laugh- 
ing face and shoulder of that Bacchante. Let me 
suppose that besides Mrs. Tileston, Edith was 
there, and Emily and Carrie and Haliburton and 
Fred. Suppose just then the door-bell rang, and 
Mr. Charles Sumner came upstairs fresh from 
Washington. What should we all say and do? 

" Why, of course we should be glad to see him, 
and we should ask him about Washington and the 
Session, — what sort of a person Lady Bruce was, 
— and whether it was really true that General 
Butler said that bright thing about the Governor 
of Arkansas. 

" And Mr. Sumner would say that General But- 
ler said a much better thing than that. He said 
that m-m-m-m-m — 

" Then Mrs. Tileston would say, * Oh, I thought 
that s-s-s-s-s — ' 

" Then I should say, * Oh no ! I am sure that 
u-u-u-u — , &c.' 

" Then Edith would laugh and say, ' Why, no, 
Mr. Hale. I am sure that, &c., &c, &c, &c.' " 

You will find that the carrying out an imaginary 
conversation, where you really fill these blanks, 
and make the remarks of the different people in 
character, is a very good entertainment, — what 
we called very good fun when you and I were at 
school, — and helps along the hours of your watch- 
ing or of your travel greatly. 



154 How to do It 

Second, as I said, there is reading. Now I 
have already gone into some detail in this mat- 
ter. But under the head of solitude, this is to be 
added, that one is often alone, when he can read. 
And books, of course, are such a luxury. But do 
you know that if you expect to be alone, you had 
better take with you only books enough, and not 
too many? It is an " embarrassment of riches," 
sometimes, to find yourself with too many books. 
You are tempted to lay down one and take up 
another; you are tempted to skip and skim too 
much, so that you really get the good of none of 
them. 

There is no time so good as the forced stopping- 
places of travel for reading up the hard, heavy 
reading which must be done, but which nobody 
wants to do. Here, for two years, I have been 
trying to make you read Gibbon, and you would 
not touch it at home. But if I had you in the 
mission-house at Mackinaw, waiting for days for 
a steamboat, and you had finished " Blood and 
Thunder," and " Sighs and Tears," and then found 
a copy of Gibbon in the house, I think you would 
go through half of it, at least, before the steamer 
came. 

Walter Savage Landor used to keep five books, 
and only five, by him, I have heard it said. When 
he had finished one of these, and finished it com- 
pletely, he gave it away, and bought another. I 
do not recommend that, but I do recommend the 
principle of thorough reading on which it is 



Life Alone 155 

founded. Do not be fiddling over too many 
books at one time. 

Third, " But, my dear Mr. Hale, I get so tired, 
sometimes, of reading." Of course you do. Who 
does not? I never knew anybody who did not 
tire of reading sooner or later. But you are alone, 
as we suppose. Then be all ready to write. Take 
care that your inkstand is filled as regularly as 
the wash-pitcher on your washstand. Take care 
that there are pens and blotting-paper, and every- 
thing that you need. These should be looked to 
every day, with the same care with which every 
other arrangement of your room is made. When 
I come to make you that long-promised visit, and 
say to you, before my trunk is open, " I want to 
write a note, Blanche," be all ready at the instant. 
Do not have to put a little water into the ink- 
stand, and to run down to papa's office for some 
blotting-paper, and get the key to mamma's desk 
for some paper. Be ready to write for your life, 
at any moment, as Walter, there, is ready to ride 
for his. 

" Dear me ! Mr. Hale, I hate to write. What 
shall I say?" 

Do not say what Mr. Hale has told you, what- 
ever else you do. Say what you yourself may 
want to see hereafter. The chances are very small 
that anybody else, save some dear friend, will 
want to see what you write. 

But, of course, your journal, and especially your 
letters, are matters always new, for which the day 



156 How to do It 

itself gives plenty of subjects, and these two are 
an admirable regular resort when you are alone. 

As to drawing, no one can have a better draw- 
ing-teacher than himself. Remember that. And 
whoever can learn to write can learn to draw. 
Of all the boys who have ever entered at the 
Worcester Technical School, it has proved that all 
could draw, and I think the same is true at West 
Point. Keep your drawings, not to show to other 
people, but to show yourself whether you are im- 
proving. And thank me, ten years hence, that I 
advised you to do so. 

You do not expect me to go into detail as to 
the method in which you can teach yourself. 
This is, however, sure. If you will determine to 
learn to see things truly, you will begin to draw 
them truly. It is, for instance, almost never that 
the wheel of a carriage really is round to your 
eye. It is round to your thought. But unless 
your eye is exactly opposite the hub of the wheel 
in the line of the axle, the wheel does not make 
a circle on the retina of your eye, and ought not 
to be represented by a circle in your drawing. 
To draw well, the first resolution and the first 
duty is to see well. Second, do not suppose that 
mere technical method has much to do with real 
success. Soft pencil rather than hard ; sepia rather 
than India ink. Yes : but it is pure truth that tells 
in drawing, and that is what you can gain. Take 
perfectly simple objects, at a little distance, to 
begin with. Yes, the gate-posts at the garden 



Habits in Church 157 

gate are as good as anything. Draw the outline 
as accurately as you can, but remember there is 
no outline in nature, and that the outline in draw- 
ing is simply conventional; represent — which 
means present again, or re-present — the shadows 
as well as you can. Notice, — is the shadow under 
the cap of the post deeper than that of the side? 
Then let it be re-presented so on your paper. 
Do this honestly, as well as you can. Keep it to 
compare with what you do next week or next 
month. And if you have a chance to see a good 
draughtsman work, quietly watch him, and re- 
member. Do not hurry, nor try hard things at 
the beginning. Above all, do not begin with 
large landscapes. 

As for singing, there is nothing that so lights 
up a whole house as the strain, through the open 
windows, of some one who is singing alone. We 
feel sure, then, that there is at least one person in 
that house who is well and is happy. 



CHAPTER XII 

HABITS IN CHURCH 

Perhaps I can fill a gap, if I say something to 
young people about their habits in church-going, 
and in spending the hour of the church service. 

When I was a boy, we went to school on week- 
days for four hours in the morning and three in 



158 How to do It 

the afternoon. We went to church on Sunday at 
about half-past ten, and church " let out " at twelve. 
We went again in the afternoon, and the service 
was a little shorter. I knew and know precisely 
how much shorter, for I sat in sight of the clock, 
and bestowed a great deal too much attention on 
it. But I do not propose to tell you that. 

Till I was taught some of the things which I 
now propose to teach you, this hour and a half 
in church seemed to me to correspond precisely 
to the four hours in school, — I mean it seemed 
just as long. The hour and twenty minutes of 
the afternoon seemed to me to correspond pre- 
cisely with the three hours of afternoon school. 
After I learned some of these things, church- 
going seemed to me very natural and simple, and 
the time I spent there was very short and very 
pleasant to me. 

I should say, then, that there are a great 
many reasonably good boys and girls, reasonably 
thoughtful, also, who find the confinement of a 
pew oppressive, merely because they do not know 
the best way to get the advantage of a service, 
which is really of profit to children as it is to 
grown-up people, and which never has its full 
value as it does when children and grown people 
join together in it. 

Now, to any young people who are reading this 
paper, and are thinking about their own habits 
in church, I should say very much what I should 
about swimming, or drawing, or gardening; that, 



Habits in Church 159 

if the thing to be done is worth doing at all, you 
want to do it with your very best power. You 
want to give yourself up to it, and get the very 
utmost from it. 

You go to church, I will suppose, twice a day 
on Sunday. Is it not clearly best, then, to carry 
out to the very best the purpose with which you are 
there? You are there to worship God. Steadily 
and simply determine that you will worship him, 
and you will not let such trifles distract you as 
often do distract people from this purpose. 

What if the door does creak? what if a dog 
does bark near by? what if the horses outside do 
neigh or stamp ? You do not mean to confess that 
you, a child of God, are going to submit to dogs, 
or horses, or creaking doors ! 

If you will give yourself to the service with all 
your heart and soul, — with all your might, as a 
boy does to his batting or his catching at base- 
ball ; if, when the congregation is at prayer, you 
determine that you will not be hindered in your 
prayer; or, when the time comes for singing, that 
you will not be hindered from joining in the sing- 
ing with voice or with heart, — why, you can do 
so. I never heard of a good fielder in base-ball 
missing a fly because a dog barked, or a horse 
neighed, on the outside of the ball-ground. 

If I kept a high school, I would call together 
the school once a month, to train all hands in the 
habits requisite for listeners in public assemblies. 
They should be taught that just as rowers in a 



160 How to do It 

boat-race row and do nothing else, — as soldiers 
at dress parade present arms, shoulder arms, and 
the rest, and do nothing else, no matter what hap- 
pens, during that half-hour, — that so, when peo- 
ple meet to listen to an address or to a concert, 
they should listen, and do nothing else. 

It is perfectly easy for people to get control 
and keep control of this habit of attention. If I 
had the exercise I speak of, in a high school, the 
scholars should be brought together, as I say, and 
carried through a series of discipline in presence 
of mind. 

Books, resembling hymn-books in weight and 
size, should be dropped from galleries behind 
them, till they were perfectly firm under such 
scattering fire, and did not look round ; squeaking 
dolls, of the size of large children, should be led 
squeaking down the passages of the school-room, 
and other strange objects should be introduced, 
until the scholars were all proof, and did not turn 
towards them once. Every one of those scholars 
would thank me afterwards. 

Think of it. You give a dollar, that you may 
hear one of Thomas's concerts. How little of 
your money's worth you get, if twenty times, as the 
concert goes on, you must turn round to see if it 
was Mrs. Grundy who sneezed, or Mr. Bundy; or 
if it was Mr. Golightly or Mrs. Heavyside who 
came in too late at the door. And this attention 
to what is before you is a matter of habit and dis- 
cipline. You should determine that you will only 



Habits in Church 161 

do in church what you go to church for, and ad- 
here to your determination until the habit is 
formed. 

If you find, as a great many boys and girls do, 
that the sermon in church comes in as a stum- 
bling-block in the way of this resolution, that you 
cannot fix your attention steadily upon it, I recom- 
mend that you try taking notes of it. I have never 
known this to fail. 

It is not necessary to do this in short-hand, 
though that is a very charming accomplishment. 
Any one of you can teach himself how to write 
short-hand, and there is no better practice than 
you can make for yourself at church in taking 
notes of sermons. 

But supposing you cannot write short-hand. 
Take a little book with stiff covers, such as you 
can put in your pocket. The reporters use books 
of ruled paper, of the length of a school writing- 
book, but only two or three inches wide, and open- 
ing at the end. That is a very good shape. Then 
you want a pencil or two cut sharp before you go 
to church. You will learn more easily what you 
want to write than I can teach you. You cannot 
write the whole, even of the shortest sentence, 
without losing part of the next. But you can write 
the leading ideas, perhaps the leading words. 

When you go home you will find you have a 
" skeleton," as it is called, of the whole sermon. 
And, if you want to profit by the exercise, you 
may very well spend an hour of the afternoon in 



1 62 How to do It 

writing out in neat and finished form a sketch of 
some one division of it. 

But even if you do nothing with the notes after 
you come home, you will find that they have made 
the sermon very short for you; that you have 
been saved from sleepiness, and that you after- 
wards remember what the preacher said, with un- 
usual distinctness. You will also gradually gain a 
habit of listening, with a view to remembering; 
noticing specially the course and train of the argu- 
ment or of the statement of any speaker. 

Of course I need not say that in church you 
must be reverent in manner, must not disturb 
others, and must not occupy yourself intentionally 
with other people's dress or demeanor. If you 
really meant or wanted to do these things, you 
would not be reading this paper. 

But it may be worth while to say that even chil- 
dren and other young people may remember to 
advantage that they form a very important part of 
the congregation. If, therefore, the custom of 
worship where you are arranges for responses to 
be read by the people, you, who are among the 
people, are to respond. If it provides for congre- 
gational singing, and you can sing the tune, you 
are to sing. It is certain that it requires the peo- 
ple all to be in their places when the service begins. 
That you can do as well as the oldest of them. 

When the service is ended, do not hurry away. 
Do not enter into a wild and useless competition 
with the other boys as to which shall leap off the 



Life with Children 163 

front steps the soonest upon the grass of the 
churchyard. You can arrange much better races 
elsewhere. 

When the benediction is over, wait a minute in 
your seat; do not look for your hat and gloves till 
it is over, and then quietly and without jostling 
leave the church, as you might pass from one 
room of your father's house into another, when a 
large number of his friends were at a great party. 
That is precisely the condition of things in which 
you are all together. 

Observe, dear children, I am speaking only of 
habits of outside behavior at church. I intention- 
ally turn aside from speaking of the communion 
with God, to which the church will help you, and 
the help from your Saviour which the church will 
make real. These are very great blessings, as I 
hope you will know. Do not run the risk of los- 
ing them by neglecting the little habits of concen- 
trated thought and of devout and simple behavior 
which may make the hour in church one of the 
shortest and happiest hours of the week. 



CHAPTER XIII 

LIFE WITH CHILDREN 

THERE is a good deal of the life of boys and girls 
which passes when they are with other boys and 
girls, and involves some difficulties with a great 



164 How to do It 

many pleasures, all its own. It is generally taken 
for granted that if the children are by themselves, 
all will go well. And if you boys and girls did but 
know it, many very complimentary things are said 
about you in this very matter. " Children do un- 
derstand each other so well." " Children get along 
so well with each other." " I feel quite relieved 
when the children find some companions." This 
sort of thing is said behind the children's backs at 
the very moment when the same children, quite 
strangers to each other, are wishing that they were 
at home themselves, or at least that these sudden 
new companions were. 

There is a well-studied picture of this mixed-up 
life of boys and girls with other boys and girls who 
are quite strangers to them in the end of Miss 
Edgeworth's " Sequel to Frank," — a book which 
I cannot get the young people to read as much as I 
wish they would. And I do not at this moment 
remember any other sketch of it in fiction quite so 
well managed, with so little overstatement, and 
with so much real good sense which children may 
remember to advantage. 

Of course, in the first place, you are to do as you 
would be done by. But, when you have said this, 
a question is still involved, for you do not know for 
a moment how you would be done by; or if you 
do know, you know simply that you would like to 
be let off from the company of these new-found 
friends. " If I did as I would be done by," said 
Clara, " I should turn round and walk to the other 



Life with Children 165 

end of the piazza, and I should leave the whole 
party of these strange girls alone. I was having a 
very good time without them, and I dare say they 
would have a better time without me. But papa 
brought me to them, and said their father was in 
college with him, and that he wanted that we 
should know each other. So I could not do, in 
that case, exactly as I would be done by without 
displeasing papa, and that would not be doing to 
him at all as I would be done by." 

The English of all this is, my dear Clara, that in 
that particular exigency on the piazza at Newbury 
you had a nice book, and you would have been 
glad to be left alone ; nay, at the bottom of your 
heart, you would be glad to be left alone a good 
deal of your life. But you do not want to be left 
alone all your life. And if your father had taken 
you to Old Point Comfort for a month, instead of 
Newbury, and you were as much a stranger to the 
ways there as this shy Lucy Percival is to our 
Northern ways at Newbury, you would be very 
much obliged to any nice Virginian girl who 
swallowed down her dislike of Yankees in gen- 
eral, and came and welcomed you as prettily as, 
in fact, you did the Percivals when your father 
brought you to them. The doing as you would be 
done by requires a study of all the conditions, not 
of the mere outside accident of the moment. 

The direction familiarly given is that we should 
meet strangers half-way. But I do not find that 
this wholly answers. These strangers may be re- 



1 66 How to do It 

presented by globules of quicksilver, or, indeed, of 
water, on a marble table. Suppose you pour out 
two little globules of quicksilver at each of two 
points . . like these two. Suppose you make the 
globules just so large that they meet half-way, 
thus, OO. At the points where they touch they 
only touch. It even seems as if there were a little 
repulsion, so that they shrink away from each other. 
But, if you will enlarge one of the drops never so 
little, so that it shall meet the other a very little 
beyond half-way, why, the two will gladly run to- 
gether into one, and will even forget that they ever 
have been parted. That is the true rule for meet- 
ing strangers. Meet them a little bit more than 
half-way. You will find in life that the people who 
do this are the cheerful people, and happy, who 
get the most out of society, and, indeed, are every- 
where prized and loved. All this is worth saying 
in a book published in Boston, because New Eng- 
enders inherit a great deal of the English shyness, 
which the French call " mauvaise honte," or " bad 
shame," and they need to be cautious particularly 
to meet strangers a little more than half-way. Bos- 
ton people, in particular, are said to suffer from the 
habits of " distance" or " reserve." 

" But I am sure I do not know what to say to 
them," says Robert, who with a good deal of diffi- 
culty has been made to read this paper thus far. 
My dear Bob, have I said that you must talk to 
them? I knew you pretended that you could not 
talk to people, though yesterday, when I was try- 



Life with Children 167 

ing to get my nap in the hammock, I certainly 
heard a great deal of rattle from somebody who 
was fixing his boat with Clem Waters in the wood- 
house. But I have never supposed that you were 
to sit in agreeable conversation about the weather, 
or the opera, with these strange boys and girls. 
Nobody but prigs would do that, and I am glad to 
say you are not a prig. But if you were turned in 
on two or three boys as Clara was on the Percival 
girls, a good thing to say would be, " Would you 
like to go in swimming?" or " How would you 
like to see us clean our fish? " or " I am going up 
to set snares for rabbits ; how would you like to 
go?" Give them a piece of yourself. That is 
what I mean by meeting more than half-way. 
Frankly, honorably, without unfair reserve, — which 
is to say, like a gentleman, — share with these 
strangers some part of your own life which makes 
you happy. Clara, there, will do the same thing. 
She will take these girls to ride, or she will teach 
them how to play " copack," or she will tell them 
about her play of the " Sleeping Beauty," and en- 
list some of them to take parts. This is what I 
mean by meeting people more than half-way. 

It may be that some of the chances of life pitch- 
fork in upon you and your associates a bevy of 
little children smaller than yourselves, whom you 
are expected to keep an eye upon. This is a 
much severer trial of your kindness, and of your 
good sense also, than the mere introduction to 
strange boys and girls of your own age. Little 



1 68 How to do It 

children seem very exacting. They are not so to 
a person who understands how to manage them. 
But very likely you do not understand, and, 
whether you do or do not, they require a constant 
eye. You will find a great deal to the point in 
Jonas's directions to Rollo, and in Beechnut's 
directions to those children in Vermont; and per- 
haps in what Jonas and Beechnut did with the 
boys and girls who were hovering round them all 
the time you will find more light than in their 
directions. Children, particularly little children, 
are very glad to be directed, and to be kept even 
at work, if they are in the company of older per- 
sons, and think they are working with them. 
Jonas states it thus: "Boys will do any amount 
of work if there is somebody to plan for them, 
and they will like to do it." If there is any un- 
dertaking of an afternoon, and you find that there 
is a body of the younger children who want to be 
with you who are older, do not make them and 
yourselves unhappy by rebuking them for " tag- 
ging after" you. Of course they tag after you. 
At their age you were glad of such improving com- 
pany as yours is. It has made you what you are. 
Instead of scolding them, then, just avail your- 
selves of their presence, and make the occasion 
comfortable to them, by giving them some occupa- 
tion for their hands. See how cleverly Fanny is 
managing down on the beach with those four little 
imps. Fanny really wants to draw, and she has 
her water-colors, and Edward Holiday has his and 



Life with Children 169 

is teaching her. And these four children from 
the hotel have " tagged " down after her. You 
would say that was too bad, and you would send 
them home, I am afraid. Fanny has not said any 
such thing. She has " accepted the position," 
and made herself queen of it, as she is apt to do. 
She showed Reginald, first of all, how to make a 
rainbow of pebbles, — violet pebbles, indigo peb- 
bles, blue pebbles, and so on to red ones. She 
explained that it had to be quite large so as to 
give the good effect. In a minute Ellen had the 
idea and started another, and then little Jo began 
to help Ellen, and Phil to help Rex. And there 
those four children have been tramping back and 
forth over the beach for an hour, bringing and sort- 
ing and arranging colored pebbles while Edward 
and Fanny have gone on quietly with their drawing. 
In short, the great thing with children, as with 
grown people, is to give them something to do. 
You can take a child of two years on your knee, 
while there is reading aloud, so that the company 
hopes for silence. Well, if you only tell that child 
to be still, he will be wretched in one minute, and 
in two will be on the floor and rushing wildly all 
round the room. But if you will take his little 
plump hand and " pat a cake " it on yours, or 
make his little fat fingers into steeples or letters 
or rabbits, you can keep him quiet without saying 
a single word for half an hour. At the end of the 
most tiresome railway journey, when everybody 
in the car is used up, the children most of all, 



170 How to do It 

you can cheer up these poor tired little things 
who have been riding day and night for six days 
from Pontchartrain, if you will take out a pair of 
scissors and cut out cats and dogs and dancing- 
girls from the newspaper or from the back of a 
letter, and will teach them how to parade them 
along on the velvet of the car. Indeed, I am not 
quite sure but you will entertain yourself as much 
as any of them. 

In any acting of charades, any arrangement of 
tableaux vivants> or similar amusements, you will 
always find that the little children are well pleased, 
and, indeed, are fully satisfied, if they also can be 
pressed into the service as " slaves " or " soldiers," 
or, as the procession-makers say, "citizens gen- 
erally," or what the stage-managers call super- 
numeraries. They need not be intrusted with 
" speaking parts ; " it is enough for them to know 
that they are recognized as a part of the company. 

I do not think that I enjoy anything more than 
I do watching a birthday party of children who 
have known each other at a good Kinder-Garten 
school like dear Mrs. Heard's. Instead of sitting 
wearily around the sides of the room, with only 
such variations as can be rendered by a party of 
rude boys playing tag up and down the stairs and 
in the hall, these children, as soon as four of them 
arrive, begin to play some of the games they have 
been used to playing at school, or branch off into 
other games which neither school nor recess has 
all the appliances for. This is because these chil- 



Life with your Elders 171 

dren are trained together to associate with each 
other. The misfortune of most schools is that, 
to preserve the discipline, the children are trained 
to have nothing to do with each other, and it is 
only at recess, or in going and coming, that they 
get the society which is the great charm and only 
value of school life. In college, or in any good 
academy, things are so managed that young men 
study together when they choose ; and there is no 
better training. In any way you manage it, bring 
that about. If the master will let you and Rachel 
sit on the garden steps while you study the " Te- 
lemachus," — or if you, Robert and Horace, can 
go up into the belfry and work out the Algebra 
together, it will be better for the " Telemachus," 
better for the Algebra, and much better for you. 



CHAPTER XIV 

LIFE WITH YOUR ELDERS 

HAVE you ever read " Amyas Leigh"? " Amyas 
Leigh " is an historical novel, written by Charles 
Kingsley, an English author. His object, or one 
of his objects, was to extol the old system of edu- 
cation, the system which trained such men as 
Walter Raleigh and Philip Sidney. 

The system was this. When a boy had grown 
up to be fourteen or fifteen years old, he was sent 
away from home by his father to some old friend 



\J2 How to do, It 

of his father, who took him into his train or com- 
pany for whatever service or help he could render. 
And so, of a sudden, the boy found himself con- 
stantly in the company of men, to learn, as he 
could, what they were doing, and to become a man 
himself under their contagion and sympathy. 

We have abandoned this system. We teach 
boys and girls as much from books as we can, and 
we give them all the fewer chances to learn from 
people or from life. 

None the less do the boys and girls meet men 
and women. And I think it is well worth our 
while, in these papers, to see how much good 
and how much pleasure they can get from the 
companionship. 

I reminded you, in the last chapter, of Jonas 
and Beechnut's wise advice about little children. 
Do you remember what Jonas told Rollo, when 
Rollo was annoyed because his father would not 
take him to ride? That instruction belongs to our 
present subject. Rollo was very fond of riding 
with his father and mother, but he thought he did 
not often get invited, and that, when he invited 
himself, he was often refused. He confided in 
Jonas on the subject. Jonas told him substan- 
tially two things : first, that his father would not 
ask him any the more often because he teased him 
for an invitation. The teasing was in itself wrong, 
and did not present him in an agreeable light to 
his father and mother, who wanted a pleasant com- 
panion, if they wanted any. This was the first 



Life with your Elders 173 

thing. The second was that Rollo did not make 
himself agreeable when he did ride. He soon 
wanted water to drink. Or he wondered when 
they should get home. Or he complained because 
the sun shone in his eyes. He made what the 
inn-keeper called " a great row generally," and so 
when his father and mother took their next ride, 
if they wanted rest and quiet, they were very apt 
not to invite him. Rollo took the hint. The next 
time he had an invitation to ride, he remembered 
that he was the invited party, and bore himself 
accordingly. He did not " pitch in " in the con- 
versation. He did not obtrude his own affairs. 
He answered when he was spoken to, listened 
when he was not spoken to, and found that he 
was well rewarded by attending to the things 
which interested his father and mother, and to the 
matters he was discussing with her. And so it 
came about that Rollo, by not offering himself 
again as captain of the party, became a frequent 
and a favorite companion. 

Now in that experience of Rollo's there is in- 
volved a good deal of the philosophy of the inter- 
course between young people and their elders. 
Yes, I know what you are saying, Theodora and 
George, just as well as if I heard you. You are 
saying that you are sure you do not want to go 
among the old folks. Certainly you shall not go 
if you are not wanted. But I wish you to observe 
that sometimes you must go among them, whether 
you want to or not ; and if you must, there are 



174 How to do It 

two things to be brought about, — first, that you 
get the utmost possible out of the occasion ; and, 
second, that the older people do. So, if you 
please, we will not go into a huff about it, but 
look the matter in the face, and see if there is not 
some simple system which governs the whole. 

Do you remember perhaps, George, the first time 
you found out what good reading there was in 
men's books, — that day when you had sprained 
your ankle, and found Mayne Reid palled a little 
bit, — when I brought you Lossing's "Field-Book 
of the Revolution," as you sat in the wheel-chair, 
and you read away upon that for hours? Do you 
remember how, when you were getting well, you 
used to limp into my room, and I let you hook 
down books with the handle of your crutch, so 
that you read the English Parrys and Captain 
Back, and then got hold of my great Schoolcraft 
and Catlin, and finally improved your French a 
good deal, before you were well, on the thirty- 
nine volumes of Garnier's " Imaginary Voyages "? 
You remember that ? So do I. That was your 
first experience in grown-up people's books, — 
books that are not written down to the supposed 
comprehension of children. Now there is an ex- 
perience just like that open to each of you, The- 
odora and George, whenever you will choose to 
avail yourselves of it in the society of grown-up 
people, if you will only take that society simply 
and modestly, and behave like the sensible boy 
and girl that you really are. 



Life with your Elders 175 

Do not be tempted to talk among people who 
are your elders. Those horrible scrapes that Frank 
used to get into, such as Harry once got into, arose, 
like most scrapes in this world, from their want 
of ability to hold their tongues. Speak when you 
are spoken to, not till then, and then get off 
with as little talk as you can. After the second 
French revolution, my young friend Walter used 
to wish that there might be a third, so that he 
might fortunately be in the gallery of the revolu- 
tionary convention just when everything came to 
a dead-lock; and he used to explain to us, as we 
sat on the parallel bars together at recess, how he 
would just spring over the front of the gallery, 
swing himself across to the canopy above the 
Speaker's seat, and slide down a column to the 
Tribune, there " where the orators speak, you 
know," and how he would take advantage of 
the surprise to address them in their own lan- 
guage ; how he would say " Frangais, — mes freres " 
(which means, Frenchmen, — brothers) ; and how, 
in such strains of burning eloquence, he would set 
all right so instantaneously that he would be pro- 
claimed Dictator, placed in a carriage instantly, and 
drawn by an adoring and grateful people to the 
Palace of the Tuileries, to live there for the rest 
of his natural life. It was natural for Walter to 
think he could do all that if he got the chance. 
But I remember, in planning it out, he never got 
much beyond "Frangais, — mesfrkres" and in forty 
years this summer, in which time four revolutions 



176 How to do It 

have taken place in France, Walter has never 
found the opportunity. It is seldom, very seldom, 
that in a mixed company it is necessary for a boy 
of sixteen, or a girl of fifteen, to get the others 
out of a difficulty. You may burn to interrupt, 
and to cry out, " Frangais y — mes freres" but you 
had better bite your tongue, and sit still. Do not 
explain that Rio Janeiro is the capital of Brazil. In 
a few minutes it will appear that they all knew it, 
though they did not mention it, and by your wait- 
ing you will save yourself horrible mortification. 

Meanwhile you are learning things in the nicest 
way in the world. Do not you think that Amyas 
Leigh enjoyed what he learned of Guiana and the 
Orinoco River much more than you enjoy all you 
have ever learned of it? Yes. He learned it all 
by going there in the company of Walter Raleigh 
and sundry other such men. Suppose, George, 
that you could get the engineers, Mr. Burnell and 
Mr. Philipson, to take you with them when they 
run the new railroad line, this summer, through 
the passes of the Adirondack Mountains. Do you 
not think you shall enjoy that more even than 
reading Mr. Murray's book, far more than studying 
levelling and surveying in the first class at the 
High School? Get a chance to carry chain for 
them, if you can. No matter if you lose at school 
two medals, three diplomas, and four double pro- 
motions by your absence. Come round to me 
some afternoon, and I will tell you in an hour all 
the school-boys learned while you were away in 



Life with your Elders 177 

the mountains ; all, I mean, that you cannot make 
up in a well-used month after your return. 

And please to remember this, all of you, though 
it seems impossible. Remember it as a fact, even 
if you cannot account for it, that though we all 
seem so old to you, just as* if we were dropping 
into our graves, we do not, in practice, feel any 
older than we did when we were sixteen. True, 
we have seen the folly of a good many things 
which you want to see the folly of. We do not, 
therefore, in practice, sit on the rocks in the spray 
quite so near to the water as you do ; and we go 
to bed a little earlier, even on moonlight nights. 
This is the reason that, when the whole merry 
party meet at breakfast, we are a little more apt 
to be in our places than — some young people I 
know. But, for all that, we do not feel any older 
than we did when we were sixteen. We enjoy 
building with blocks as well, and we can do it a 
great deal better; we like the " Arabian Nights" 
just as well as we ever did ; and we can laugh at 
a good charade quite as loud as any of you can. 
So you need not take it on yourself to suppose 
that because you are among " old people," — by 
which you mean married people, — all is lost, and 
that the hours are to be stupid and forlorn. The 
best series of parties, lasting year in and out, that 
I have ever known, were in Worcester, Massachu- 
setts, where old and young people associated to- 
gether more commonly and frequently than in 
any other town I ever happened to live in, and 



178 How to do It 

where, for that very reason, society was on the 
best footing. I have seen a boy of twelve take 
a charming lady, three times his age, down Pearl 
Street on his sled. And I have ridden in a riding 
party to Paradise with twenty other horsemen and 
with twenty-one horsewomen, of whom the young- 
est, Theodora, was younger than you are, and quite 
as pretty, and the oldest very likely was a judge 
on the Supreme Bench. I will not say that she 
did not like to have one of the judges ride up and 
talk with her quite as well as if she had been left 
to Ferdinand Fitz-Mortimer. I will say that some 
of the Fitz-Mortimer tribe did not ride as well as 
they did ten years after. 

Above all, dear children, work out in life the 
problem or the method by which you shall be a 
great deal with your father and your mother. 
There is no joy in life like the joy you can have 
with them. Fun or learning, sorrow or jollity, you 
can share it with them as with nobody beside. 
You are just like your father, Theodora, and you, 
George, I see your mother's face in you as you 
stand behind the bank counter, and I wonder 
what you have done with your curls. I say you 
are just like. I am tempted to say you are the 
same. And you can and you will draw in from 
them notions and knowledges, lights on life, and 
impulses and directions which no books will ever 
teach you, and which it is a shame to work out 
from long experience, when you can — as you can 
— have them as your birthright. 



Habits of Reading 179 



CHAPTER XV 

HABITS OF READING 

I HAVE devoted two chapters of this book to the 
matter of Reading, speaking of the selection of 
books and of the way to read them. But since 
those papers were first printed, I have had I know 
not how many nice notes from young people, in 
all parts of this land, asking all sorts of additional 
directions. Where the matter has seemed to me 
private or local, I have answered them in private 
correspondence. But I believe I can bring to- 
gether, under the head of " Habits of Reading," 
some additional notes, which will at least reinforce 
what has been said already, and will perhaps give 
clearness and detail. 

All young people read a good deal, but I do not 
see that a great deal comes of it. They think they 
have to read a good many newspapers and a good 
many magazines. These are entertaining, — they 
are very entertaining. But it is not always certain 
that the reader gets from them just what he needs. 
On the other hand, it is certain that people who 
only read the current newspapers and magazines 
get very little good from each other's society, be- 
cause they are all fed with just the same intellect- 
ual food. You hear them repeat to each other 
the things they have all read in the Daily 
Trumpet, or the Saturday Woodpecker. In these 



180 How to do It 

things, of course, there can be but little variety, 
all the Saturday Woodpeckers of the same date 
being very much like each other. When, there- 
fore, the people in the same circle meet each 
other, their conversation cannot be called very 
entertaining or very improving, if this is all they 
have to draw upon. It reminds one of the pictures 
in people's houses in the days of " Art Unions." 
An Art Union gave you, once a year, a very cheap 
engraving. But it gave the same engraving to 
everybody. So, in every house you went to, for 
one year, you saw the same men dancing on a flat- 
boat. Then, a year after, you saw Queen Mary 
signing Lady Jane Grey's death-warrant. She 
kept signing it all the time. You might make 
seventeen visits in an afternoon. Everywhere you 
saw her signing away on that death-warrant. You 
came to be very tired of the death-warrant and of 
Queen Mary. Well, that is much the same way 
in which seventeen people improve each other, 
who have all been reading the Daily Trumpet 
and the Saturday Woodpecker, and Jiave read 
nothing beside. 

I see no objection, however, to light reading, 
desultory reading, the reading of newspapers, or 
the reading of fiction, if you take enough ballast 
with it, so that these light kites, as the sailors call 
them, may not carry your ship over in some sud- 
den gale. The principle of sound habits of read- 
ing, if reduced to a precise rule, comes out thus : 
That for each hour of light reading, of what we 



Habits of Reading 1 8 1 

read for amusement, we ought to take another 
hour of reading for instruction. Nor have I any 
objection to stating the same rule backward; for 
that is a poor rule that will not work both ways. 
It is, I think, true that for every hour we give to 
grave reading it is well to give a corresponding 
hour to what is light and amusing. 

Now a great deal more is possible under this 
rule than you boys and girls think at first. Some 
of the best students in the world, who have ad- 
vanced its affairs farthest in their particular lines, 
have not in practice studied more than two hours 
a day. Walter Scott, except when he was goaded 
to death, did not work more. ' Dr. Bowditch 
translated the great " Mecanique Celeste " in less 
than two hours' daily labor. I have told you al- 
ready of George Livermore. But then this work 
was regular as the movement of the planets 
which Dr. Bowditch and La Place described. It 
did not stop for whim or by accident, more than 
Jupiter stops in his orbit because a holiday comes 
round. 

" But what in the world do you suppose Mr. 
Hale means by 'grave reading,' or 'improving 
reading'? Does he mean only those stupid books 
that ' no gentleman's library should be without ' ? 
I suppose somebody reads them at some time, or 
they would not be printed ; but I am sure I do not 
know when or where or how to begin." This is 
what Theodora says to Florence, when they have 
read thus far. 



1 82 How to do It 

Let us see. In the first place, you are not, all 
of you, to attempt everything. Do one thing well, 
and read one subject well ; that is much better than 
reading ten subjects shabbily and carelessly. What 
is your subject? It is not hard to find that out. 
Here you are, living perhaps on the very road on 
which the English troops marched to Lexington 
and Concord. In one of the beams of the barn 
there is a hole made by a musket-ball, which was 
fired as they retreated. How much do you know 
of that march of theirs? How much have you 
read of the accounts that were written of it the 
next day? Have you ever read Bancroft's account 
of it? or Botta's? or Frothingham's? There is a 
large book, which you can get at without much 
difficulty, called the "American Archives." The 
Congress of this country ordered its preparation, 
at immense expense, that you and people like you 
might be able to study, in detail, the early history 
in the original documents, which are reprinted 
there. In that book you will find the original 
accounts of the battle as they were published in 
the next issues of the Massachusetts newspapers. 
You will find the official reports written home by 
the English officers. You will find the accounts 
published by order of the Provincial Congress. 
When you have read these, you begin to know 
something about the battle of Lexington. 

Then there are such books as General Heath's 
Memoirs, written by people who were in the battle, 
giving their account of what passed, and how it 



Habits of Reading 183 

was done. If you really want to know about a 
piece of history which transpired in part under the 
windows of your house, you will find you can very 
soon bring together the improving and very agree- 
able solid reading which my rule demands. 

Perhaps you do not live by the road that leads 
to Lexington. Everybody does not. Still, you 
live somewhere, and you live next to something. 
As Dr. Thaddeus Harris said to me (Yes, Harry, 
the same who made your insect-book), "If you 
have nothing else to study, you can study the 
mosses and lichens hanging on the logs on the 
woodpile in the woodhouse." Try that winter 
botany. Observe for yourself, and bring together 
the books that will teach you the laws of growth 
of those wonderful plants. At the end of a winter 
of such careful study I believe you could have 
more knowledge of God's work in that realm of 
nature than any man in America now has, if I 
except perhaps some five or six of the most dis- 
tinguished naturalists. 

I have told you about making your own index 
to any important book you read. I ought to have 
advised you somewhere not to buy many books. 
If you are reading in books from a library, never, 
as you are a decently well-behaved boy or girl, 
never make any sort of mark upon a page which 
is not your own. All you need, then, for your 
index, is a little page of paper, folded in where 
you can use it for a book-mark, on which you will 
make the same memorandum which you would 



184 How to do It 

have made on the fly-leaf, were the book your 
own. In this case you will keep these memoran- 
dum pages together in your scrap-book, so that you 
can easily find them. And if, as is very likely, you 
have to refer to the book afterward, in another 
edition, you will be glad if your first reference has 
been so precise that you can easily find the place, 
although the paging is changed. John Locke's 
rule is this : Refer to the page, with another refer- 
ence to the number of pages in the 'volume. At 
the same time tell how many volumes there are in 
the set you use. You would enter Charles II.'s 
escape from England, as described in the Pictorial 
History of England, thus : — 

" Charles II. escapes after battle of Worcester. 

" Pictorial Hist. Eng. ffi, Vol. j." 

You will have but little difficulty in finding 
your place in any edition of the " Pictorial His- 
tory," if you have made as careful a reference as 
this is. 

My own pupils, if I may so call the young 
friends who read with me, will laugh when they 
see the direction that you go to the original au- 
thorities whenever you can do so. For I send 
them on very hard-working tramps, that they may 
find the original authorities, and perhaps they 
think that I am a little particular about it Of 
course, it depends a good deal on what your cir- 
cumstances are, whether you can go to the origi- 
nals. But if you are near a large library, the 
sooner you can cultivate the habit of looking in 



Habits of Reading 185 

the original writers, the more will you enjoy the 
study of history, of biography, of geography, or 
of any other subject. It is stupid enough to learn 
at school that the Bay of God's Mercy is in N. 
Latitude 73 , W. Longitude 117 . But read Cap- 
tain McClure's account of the way the " Resolute " 
ran into the Bay of God's Mercy, and what good 
reason he had for naming it so, and I think you 
will never again forget where it is, or look on the 
words as only the answer to a stupid " map ques- 
tion." 

I was saying very much what I have been writ- 
ing, last Thursday, to Ella, with whom I had a 
nice day's sail; and she, who is only too eager 
about her reading and study, said she did not 
know where to begin. She felt her ignorance so 
terribly about every separate thing that she wanted 
to take hold everywhere. She had been reading 
" Lothair," and found she knew nothing about Gari- 
baldi and the battle of Aspramonte. Then she 
had been talking about the long Arctic days with 
a traveller, and she found she knew nothing about 
the Arctic regions. She was ashamed to go to a 
concert, and not know the difference between the 
lives of Mozart and of Mendelssohn. I had to tell 
Ella, what I have said to you, that we cannot all 
of us do all things. Far less can we do them all 
at once. I reminded her of the rule for European 
travelling, — which you may be sure is good, — 
that it is better to spend three days in one place 
than one day each in three places. And I told 



1 86 How to do It 

Ella that she must apply the same rule to subjects. 
Take these very instances. If she really gets well 
acquainted with Mendelssohn's life, — feels that 
she knows him, his habit of writing, and what 
made him what he was, — she will enjoy every 
piece of his music she ever hears with ten times 
the interest it had for her before. But if she looks 
him out in a cyclopaedia and forgets him, and looks 
out Mercadante and forgets him, and finally mixes 
up Mozart and Mercadante and Mendelssohn and 
Meyerbeer, because all four of these names begin 
with M, why, she will be where a great many very 
nice boys and girls are who go to concerts, but 
where as sensible a girl as Ella does not want to 
be, and where I hope none of you want to be for 
whom I am writing. 

But perhaps this is more than need be said after 
what is in Chapters V. and VI. Now you may put 
down this book and read for recreation. Shall 
it be the " Bloody Dagger," or shall it be the 
"Injured Grandmother"? 



CHAPTER XVI 

GETTING READY 

When I have written a quarter part of this 
paper the horse and wagon will be brought round, 
and I shall call for Ferguson and Putnam to go 
with me for a swim. When I stop at Ferguson's 
house, he will himself come to the door with his 



Getting Ready 187 

bag of towels, — I shall not even leave the wagon, 
— Ferguson will jump in, and then we shall drive 
to Putnam's. When we come to Putnam's house, 
Ferguson will jump out and ring the bell. A girl 
will come to the door, and Ferguson will ask her 
to tell Horace that we have come for him. She 
will look a little confused, as if she did not know 
where he was, but she will go and find him. Fer- 
guson and I will wait in the wagon three or four 
minutes, and then Horace will come. Ferguson 
will ask him if he has his towels, and he will say, 
" Oh, no, I laid them down when I was packing my 
lunch," and he will run and get them. Just as we 
start, he will ask me to excuse him just a moment, 
and he will run back for a letter his father wants 
him to post as we come home. Then we shall go 
and have a good swim together. 1 

Now in the regular line of literature made and 
provided for young people, I should go on and 
make out that Ferguson, simply by his habit of 
promptness and by being in the right place when 
he is needed, would rise rapidly to the highest 
posts of honor and command, becoming indeed 
Khan of Tartary, or President of the United States, 
as the exigencies and costume of the story might 
require. But Horace, merely from not being ready 
on occasion, would miserably decline, and come to 
a wretched felon's end ; owing it, indeed, only to 
the accident of his early acquaintance with Fer- 

1 P. S. — We have been and returned, and all has happened 
substantially as I said. 



1 88 How to do It 

guson, that, when the sheriff is about to hang him, 
a pardon arrives just in time from him (the Presi- 
dent). But I shall not carry out for you any such 
horrible picture of these two good fellows' fate. 
In my judgment, one of these results is almost as 
horrible as is the other. I will tell you, however, 
that the habit of being ready is going to make for 
Ferguson a great deal of comfort in this world, and 
bring him in a great deal of enjoyment. And, 
on the other hand, Horace the Unready, as they 
would have called him in French history, will 
work through a great deal of discomfort and 
mortification before he rids himself of the habit 
which I have illustrated for you. It is true that 
he has a certain rapidity, which somebody calls 
" shiftiness," of resolution and of performance, 
which gets him out of his scrapes as rapidly 
as he gets in. But there is a good deal of vital 
power lost in getting in and getting out, which 
might be spent to better purpose, — for pure en- 
joyment, or for helping other people to pure 
enjoyment. 

The art of getting ready, then, shall be the clos- 
ing subject of this little series of papers. Of 
course, in the wider sense, all education might be 
called the art of getting ready, as, in the broadest 
sense of all, I hope all you children remember 
every day that the whole of this life is the get- 
ting ready for life beyond this. Bear that in mind, 
and you will not say that this is a trivial accom- 
plishment of Ferguson's, which makes him always 






Getting Ready 189 

a welcome companion, often and often gives him 
the power of rendering a favor to somebody who 
has forgotten something, and, in short, in the twen- 
ty-four hours of every day, gives to him " all the 
time there is." It is also one of those accomplish- 
ments, as I believe, which can readily be learned 
or gained, not depending materially on tempera- 
ment or native constitution. It comes almost of 
course to a person who has his various powers 
well in hand, — who knows what he can do, and 
what he cannot do, and does not attempt more 
than he can perform. On the other hand, it is an 
accomplishment very difficult of acquirement to a 
boy who has not yet found what he is good for, 
who has forty irons in the fire, and is changing 
from one to another as rapidly as the circus-rider 
changes, or seems to change, from Mr. Pickwick to 
Sam Weller. 

Form the habit, then, of looking at to-morrow 
as if you were the master of to-morrow, and not 
its slave. " There 's no such word as fail ! " That 
is what Richelieu says to the boy, and in the real 
conviction that you can control such circum- 
stances as made Horace late for our ride, you have 
the power that will master them. As Mrs. Henry 
said to her husband, about leaping over the high 
bar, — " Throw your heart over, John, and your 
heels will go over." That is a very fine remark, 
and it covers a great many problems in life besides 
those of circus-riding. You are, thus far, master 
of to-morrow. It has not outflanked you, nor 



190 How to do It 

circumvented you at any point. You do not 
propose that it shall. What, then, is the first 
thing to be sought by way of " getting ready," 
of preparation? 

It is vivid imagination of to-morrow. Ask in 
advance, What time does the train start? Answer, 
" Seven minutes of eight." What time is break- 
fast? Answer, " For the family, half-past seven." 
Then I will now, lest it be forgotten, ask Mary to 
give me a cup of coffee at seven fifteen ; and, lest 
she should forget it, I will write it on this card, 
and she may tuck the card in her kitchen-clock 
case. What have I to take in the train ? Answer, 
" Father's foreign letters, to save the English mail, 
my own Voting Folks to be bound, and Fanny's 
breast-pin for a new pin." Then I hang my hand- 
bag now on the peg under my hat, put into it the 
Young Folks and the breast-pin box, and ask 
father to put into it the English letters when they 
are done. Do you not see that the more exact the 
work of the imagination on Tuesday, the less petty 
strain will there be on memory when Wednesday 
comes? If you have made that preparation, you 
may lie in bed Wednesday morning till the very 
moment which shall leave you time enough for 
washing and dressing ; then you may take your 
breakfast comfortably, may strike your train accu- 
rately, and attend to your commissions easily. 
Whereas Horace, on his method of life, would 
have to get up early to be sure that his things 
were brought together, in the confusion of the 



Getting Ready 191 

morning would not be able to find No. 11 of the 
Young Folks, in looking for that would lose his 
breakfast, and afterwards would lose the train, and, 
looking back on his day, would find that he rose 
early, came to town late, and did not get to the 
bookbinder's, after all. The relief from such 
blunders and annoyance comes, I say, in a lively 
habit of imagination, forecasting the thing that 
is to be done. Once forecast in its detail, it is 
very easy to get ready for it. 

Do you not remember, in " Swiss Family Robin- 
son," that when they came to a very hard pinch 
for want of twine or scissors or nails, the mother, 
Elizabeth, always had it in her " wonderful bag " ? 
I was young enough when I 'first read " Swiss 
Family " to be really taken in by this, and to think 
it magic. Indeed, I supposed the bag to be a 
lady's work-bag of beads or melon-seeds, such as 
were then in fashion, and to have such quantities 
of things come out of it was in no wise short of 
magic. It was not for many, many years that I 
observed that Francis sat on this bag in his tub, as 
they sailed to the shore. In those later years, 
however, I also noticed a sneer of Ernest's which 
I had overlooked before. He says, " I do not see 
anything very wonderful in taking out of a bag 
the same thing you have put into it." But his 
wise father says that it is the presence of mind 
which in the midst of shipwreck put the right 
things into the bag which makes the wonder. 
Now, in daily life, what we need for the comfort 



192 How to do It 

and readiness of the next day is such forecast and 
presence of mind, with a vivid imagination of the 
various exigencies it will bring us to. 

Jo Matthew was the most prompt and ready- 
person, with one exception, whom I have ever had 
to deal with. I hope Jo will read this. If he 
does, will he not write to me ? I said to Jo 
once when we were at work together in the barn, 
that I wished I had his knack of laying down a 
tool so carefully that he knew just where to find 
it. " Ah," said he, laughing, " we learned that 
in the cotton-mill. When you are running four 
looms, if something gives way, it will not do 
to be going round asking where this tool is or 
that." Now Jo's answer really fits all life very 
well. The tide will not wait, dear Pauline, while 
you are asking, "Where is my blue bow?" Nor 
will the train wait, dear George, while you are 
asking, "Where is my Walton's Arithmetic?" 

We are all in a great mill, and we can master 
it, or it will master us, just as we choose to be 
ready or not ready for the opening and shutting 
of its opportunities. 

I remember that when Haliburton was visiting 
General Hooker's headquarters, he arrived just 
as the General, with a brilliant staff, was about 
to ride out to make an interesting examination of 
the position. He asked Haliburton if he would 
join them, and, when Haliburton accepted the 
invitation gladly, he bade an aide mount him. 
The aide asked Haliburton what sort of horse he 



Getting Ready 193 

would have, and Haliburton said he would — 
and he knew he could — " ride anything." He is 
a thorough horseman. You see what a pleasure it 
was to him that he was perfectly ready for that 
contingency, wholly unexpected as it was. I like 
to hear him tell the story, and I often repeat it to 
young people, who wonder why some persons get 
forward so much more easily than others. War- 
burton, at the same moment, would have had to 
apologize, and say he would stay in camp writing 
letters, though he would have had nothing to say. 
For Warburton had never ridden horses to water 
or to the blacksmith's, and could not have mounted 
on the stupidest beast in the headquarters en- 
campment. The difference between the two men 
is simply that the one is ready and the other is 
not. 

Nothing comes amiss in the great business of 
preparation, if it has been thoroughly well learned. 
And the strangest things came of use, too, at 
the strangest times. A sailor teaches you to 
tie a knot when you are on a fishing party, and 
you tie that knot the next time when you are 
patching up the Emperor of Russia's carriage for 
him, in a valley in the Ural Mountains. But " get- 
ting ready " does not mean the piling in of a heap 
of accidental accomplishments. It means sedu- 
lously examining the coming duty or pleasure, 
imagining it even in its details, decreeing the 
utmost punctuality so far as you are concerned, 
and thus entering upon them as a knight armed 

13 



1 94 How to do It 

from head to foot. This is the man whom Words- 
worth describes, — 

" Who, if he be called upon to face 

Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined 

Great issues, good or bad for human kind, 

Is happy as a Lover; and attired 

With sudden brightness, like a man inspired ; 

And through the heat of conflict keeps the law 

In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw ; 

Or if an unexpected call succeed, 

Come when it will, is equal to the need." 



HOW TO LIVE 



HOW TO LIVE 

[Seventeen years after the publication of How to do It, I 
was asked to prepare for the great Chautauqua Reading Course 
the papers on Practical Ethics of 1886. 

I addressed these to the seniors of the young people for whom 
How to do It was written. They were printed for fifty thou- 
sand Chautauqua readers in 1886 under the title How to Live.] 

CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTION 

I AM to send to The Chautauquan sixteen pa- 
pers on the Method and Practice of Life. 

They will be called " HOW TO Live." 

They are, therefore, essays in practical ethics. 

The received treatises on morals, with a few 
distinguished exceptions, treat very largely on 
the origin of morals. They discuss the ques- 
tions, how does man know what is right or what 
is wrong, and why does he think one thing right 
and another wrong? 

There are but very few books which, taking for 
granted, once for all, the sense of right, attempt 
to give what I may call practical recipes for liv- 
ing, — which may be made of use, — as directions 
for the care of hens, or the feeding of cows, or the 
mixing of bread are made of use. 

I have undertaken to give to the readers of 



198 How to Live 

The Chautauquan sixteen essays, which shall, in 
practice, give such directions. I am not to dis- 
cuss the origin of the moral sense. On the other 
hand, I take it for granted that the readers of these 
papers have a distinct notion of the difference be- 
tween " Ought " and " Ought not," between what 
is right and what is wrong. 

I shall take for granted some other things, con- 
nected more or less directly with this sense of 
right and wrong. 

I shall take it for granted that my readers 
believe in the existence of God, — and in his 
presence here now, — that he loves them and 
cares for them. 

I shall suppose that my readers know they are 
his children, — that they may be partakers of his 
nature, — and that they wish to draw near to him. 

I suppose also that I and my readers agree, in 
believing that in the New Testament, the Son of 
God gave statements of man's duty and of the 
Way of Life, — which, on the whole, we can un- 
derstand ; and that this statement is sufficient for 
our direction if we faithfully use it. 

I should never have written the essays which 
the reader is now to try to read, but that, many 
years ago, I wrote a smaller book, for younger 
readers, which was called " How TO DO It." 

This book proved to be useful, and has since 
been a text-book in many schools in this country 
and in Europe. 



Introduction 199 

In a friendly and familiar way I undertook to 
teach my young friends — not the essentials of life 
— but some of those details of method which 
are next to essentials in modern Society. Thus 
one chapter told " How to Talk," one " How to 
Read," one " How to Write," and one " How to 
go into Society." 

The young people for whom it was written were 
about seventeen years old seventeen years ago. 
They are now the fathers and mothers of families. 
One or another of them asks me, almost every 
week of my life, some question much more seri- 
ous than those of talking or of writing. Such 
questions I answer as I can, — now in a sermon, 
now in a letter, now on the front seat of the car- 
riage, while those behind us are chattering on 
other themes. One of the queens in her own 
circle, who, with the noblest inspirations allied 
to intuitive wisdom, makes glad hundreds all 
around her, has asked me to write a chapter in 
answer to the question " How to grow old ? " 
When I told another of my best advisers of this 
question, she said, " I would advise you to write 
on ' How to grow young.' " There is wisdom in 
both suggestions. 

From a thousand such suggestions and ques^ 
tions the plan of these papers has grown. The 
essays, such as they are, will embody the sugges- 
tions from at least a thousand of such advisers, 
persons, all of them, of some experience in the 
matters where they question and advise. 



200 How to Live 

Such as they are, the essays are written by an 
American for Americans. They are written by an 
American who is neither rich nor poor, for Ameri- 
cans who are neither rich nor poor. They at- 
tempt to meet only the common conditions of our 
social order. 

It is necessary to say this, in an introduction, 
because, by misfortune, much of what we read in 
America is written in England, by people who 
know the English social order only, and write for 
it, as they should. We therefore sympathize 
with the position, the trials, the successes and mis- 
fortunes of Lord Fitz-Mortimer and Lady Agnes, 
and almost fancy, for a moment, that we are Mar- 
quises or Dukes, Marchionesses or Duchesses. 
At least we feel, as Mr. Pinckney did, that, apart 
from our republican prejudices, we should be very 
glad to fill the position of an English nobleman 
with a large and independent income. 

Now, in fact, none of us will fill that position, 
no, nor any position like it. We are American 
citizens, and shall remain such. To a certain 
extent each of us is a leader in the social circle 
in which he lives, and that is a legitimate ambition 
by which any one of us tries to enlarge such lead- 
ership. But, all the same, each of us has to lay 
down the novel to go and take care of his horse, 
or his child, or his shop, or his correspondence ; 
each of us has duties to society which he cannot 
shirk ; each of us must consider " ought " and 
" ought not " from a point of view wholly different 



Introduction 201 

from that of those people we read of in the 
romances or in the history of other parts of the 
world. 

So far as I can understand it, their position has 
some very great difficulties. Our position also has 
some very great difficulties. But their difficulties 
are not by any means always ours, and our diffi- 
culties are not always theirs. 

I have, therefore, to say, in the beginning, that 
this is an American book, written by an American 
author for American readers. I have no idea that 
any person trained under other institutions than 
ours will ever understand it. Far less will such 
people profit by it. Dr. Furness once said that 
he remembered no writer trained under an abso- 
lute government who seemed to understand what 
Jesus Christ meant by the " Kingdom of God," 
which our time sometimes calls " The Christian 
Commonwealth." 1 I should say the same thing. 
And, therefore, I should say in general, to readers 
in America, that they must form their social ethics 
distinctly in view of their social condition. We 
do not live in a community where one person is 
the " fountain of honor." We do live in a com- 
munity where from the lowest class to the highest, 
there is open promotion. We do not live in a 
community where any President or Governor is 
the Sovereign. We do live in a community where 
the People is the Sovereign, and Presidents and 

1 It could be wished that the address of his which contains this 
statement, and a hundred others of his addresses, might be printed. 



202 How to Live 

Governors are the servants, perhaps messengers 
or clerks, of the people. Most important of all, 
we live in a community where, from the nature 
of things, every man must bear his brother's 
burdens. 

I dislike " Introductions," and I generally skip 
them, when others have written them, and omit 
them in printing or in addressing the public, when 
I have written them myself. But in this case, as 
these essays must be, at best, too short for my 
purpose, I choose to have my way clear, as far as I 
can clear it, by saying in advance what I do not 
propose and what I do. Most " criticism " con- 
sists of the surprise of the critic, because the 
author does not do something else, which the 
critic would have done in his place. I do not 
write this book for the critics. I write it for the 
people who want to discuss these questions in this 
way. The best success I ask for the series is that 
described by Abraham Lincoln, — that those peo- 
ple may like it who like that sort of a book. For 
the others, I hope they will write their own books, 
and that those who like them will read them. 

The essays will be an effort to answer such 
questions as these : — 

How to choose one's calling. 

How to divide time. 

How to sleep and exercise. 

How to study and think. 

How to know God. 

How to order expenses. 



Introduction 203 

How to dress. 

How to supply the table. 

How to bear your brother's burden. 

How to remain young. 

How to deal with one's children. 

How to deal with society. 

How to grow old. 

There will be a paper on " Duty to the State," 
and one on "Duty to the Church of Christ." 

Strictly speaking, each of these should be con- 
sidered last, if this were possible; that is, each 
subject needs to be studied in the light of the 
others, and with the assumption that we are quite 
right about the others. 

For instance, if I do not sleep well, I cannot 
think well ; and, on the other hand, if I have not 
my mind well under control, I shall not sleep 
well. 

In practice, a man's growth is, or might be, 
even along all these several lines. In writing 
for the press, however, all the papers cannot be 
first, nor all last, nor can all be published side 
by side. The reader and I will do as well as we 
can. 



204 How to Live 



CHAPTER II 

HOW TO CHOOSE ONE'S CALLING 

PALEY says that it is a great blessing to man- 
kind that ninety-nine things out of a hundred in 
our lives are ordered for us, and that we only 
have to make a choice one time, while ninety-nine 
are thus directed for us. 

This is probably true. Both parts of the state- 
ment are probably true. That ninety-nine per 
cent of our duties are offered to us, and must be 
met, and also that it is well for us that we do not 
have a choice more often than we do. 

The ease of choice is very different with differ- 
ent people. Some people decide promptly, and 
then rest squarely on the decision. Other people 
decide slowly and with difficulty, and some of them, 
even then, doubt their decisions after they have 
been made. 

Did you never ride into Erie with your excellent 
Aunt Cynthia, who had to choose there some cam- 
brics to face some dresses with, when she spent 
the whole morning in selecting among four or five 
kinds, and, after all, went back the next day to ask 
the dealer to be good enough to change those she 
had bought for others ? Dear Aunt Cynthia is 



How to Choose one's Calling 205 

not the only person in the world who finds it hard 
to make a decision and hard to hold by it. 

Now it may be well to take a long time to make 
a decision. That is matter, very largely, of tem- 
perament. I had two near friends, who came to 
visit me on two different evenings. To each of 
them I showed my book of questions, which I call 
a " Moral Photograph Book." You have twenty 
questions which a person is to answer, off-hand, in 
writing: such questions as, " Who is your favorite 
author ? " " What is your favorite newspaper? " 
" What is your favorite flower? " 

One of my two friends was a great banker. He 
took the book and his pencil, and answered the 
twenty questions almost as fast as he could write. 
He was used to making up his mind promptly. 
His business required prompt decision. Some 
man would say at his desk, "What will you give 
for High-flyers to-day — to be delivered in thirty- 
one days ? " and he would answer at once, " I will 
give 37J." Such promptness had become with him 
second nature. My other friend was a judge of 
the Supreme Court. He took the first question, 
and discussed it, and then left it for another dis- 
cussion. He talked on the second question, and 
wrote an answer at last. The third was left, sub- 
ject to a second consideration. Most entertaining 
these discussions were. But, at the end of a long 
visit he had only answered six, and he never 
answered the others. 

Now, I think both these men were right, morally. 



206 How to Live 

One of them is made for prompt judgments. That 
makes him a great banker. The other is made for 
careful judgments which command the respect of 
man. That makes him a great judge. 

But each of these men would have held to his 
judgment when he had made it. There they 
differ from your poor Aunt Cynthia. And we 
must train ourselves to do what the old lawyers 
required, — " to stand by the decisions." " Stare 
decisis " was their phrase. " If you start to take 
Vienna, take Vienna," said Napoleon. And he 
who directs us all says, " He who endureth to the 
end, the same shall be saved." 

Bearing in mind, then, that our choice of occu- 
pation is not a thing for to-morrow to be changed 
the next day, we go about it seriously. William 
Ware said once, rather sorrowfully, that a young 
man is called into his father's room for a serious 
talk of an afternoon, and, in fifteen minutes, his 
career for all life is decided for him. This ought 
not to be so. He and his should take not days 
only, but months and years in the choice, if they 
can. His temperament is to be considered, — his 
real ability, — what he likes and what he does not 
like. We need not care much for the consider- 
ation whether this or that calling is over-crowded. 
If there is not room in one place for a good work- 
man, there is in another. Or, at least, it may be a 
good step in the ladder for something higher. Mr. 
Webster says, " There is always room higher up." 

Some of the very best artists have said, as to 



How to Choose one's Calling 207 

Fine Art, that you must not ask whether a pupil 
has a genius for his art, 1 but whether he likes it. 
They say that if a boy likes to play the piano well 
enough to do the hard work,* you should let him 
go on, hoping that the ability will appear. But I 
observe that this instruction is given by people of 
genius. They may be too apt to think that the 
pupils are like themselves. This is true, that 
" liking " and steadiness make the best test we 
have. As to genius, we are often mistaken. But 
there are questions to be considered beside this 
of liking, and, probably, to be considered first. 

This is certain, that you are to do the duty which 
comes next your hand. Say, you are sixteen 
years old. Your father and mother have other 
children to care for, and it is time you are earning 
your living. I should not say then that you have 
a large range in choosing what you will do. You 
must do what there is to be done in that place, at 
that time. Thus, the doctor wants an intelligent 
boy to drive his horse for him. Or, Mr. Long- 
stroth wants an intelligent boy to copy for him his 
treatise on the " Visigoths in Catalonia." Or, 
John Brither wants an intelligent boy to carry his 
three-leg and his chain for him in the survey of 
the Hills Common. Where there open before you 
these three chances to be of use and to earn your 

1 I had in my mind when I wrote two artists of the highest 
rank. One of the two was William Morris Hunt, who is no longer 
living. The other is one of the most distinguished musicians of 
America. 



208 How to Live 

living, you may select from the three that one 
which you like best, either for the pay, the open 
air, or the man whom you are to work under. But 
you must not reject all, because you do not like 
any one. You have these three lines from which 
to choose, but you must choose one duty next 
your hand. As among these three, you will choose 
that which on the whole offers most recompense, 
which on the whole you like best, and on the whole 
offers most promotion. 

But I should not call such decisions the choice of 
one's calling in life. These are rather steps in edu- 
cation, and you select them as a man might choose 
one of two or three schools which were open to him. 
They will, among other things, show you what you 
are fit for, and what you can do well, which, prob- 
ably, at sixteen years of age, you do not know. 

When the time comes for a decision more likely 
to be of permanent importance, you have to ask : 

I. Is this business right or wrong? You must 
not be a pirate. You must not be a counterfeiter. 
You must not be a burglar. You ought to go into 
no business which in practice, and generally, injures 
your fellow-men more than it helps them. You 
may go into the manufacture of powder, because, 
though powder kills people, it has other uses much 
larger than those of murder. But you ought not 
to retail liquor, nor sell liquors for a beverage. I 
would not manufacture them, though some liquors 
have some uses. You must not, intentionally, lead 
men into temptation. 



How to Choose one's Calling 209 

2. Of two callings, one of which is better for 
your constitution and health than the other, you 
choose the healthier. 

3. Look shyly on any calling which does not 
open out into larger lines of life. You have a right, 
as you grow older, to regular promotion. 

4. If you have a fair opportunity to carry to a 
new place the resources or attainments of an old 
place, there are good reasons for doing so. The 
chances of young men and women are, on the 
whole, better in a new country, and it should be 
so. For the invalids, those who are not adven- 
turous, and the people who have tried themselves 
and have proved failures, all like to stay in an old 
country, and they keep down the rates of compen- 
sation there. This is a legitimate reason why the 
well people, the adventurous, and those who want 
to try themselves should become apostles to a new 
country. 

5. Choose what is in the line of your genius, if 
you know what that is. But, as has been said, 
until they have tried, very few people know. And, 
on the whole, work tells. Your great artist is a 
great artist, but very likely he would have been 
a great machinist, or a great poet. 

6. An American has no right to take any calling 
in which he cannot serve the State when the State 
needs him. He must take his share in the moral, 
social, and religious life of the town in which he 
lives. 

These notes, which are all for which this chapter 
14 



21 o How to Live 

has room, will be considered again, as the discus- 
sion goes on in these papers. A man's regular 
vocation should be considered in view of his other 
occupations, which have been called, perhaps in- 
correctly, his avocations; and of his sleep, his 
exercise, his study, and of each of the separate 
lines of duty which will now come into our view. 



How to Sleep 21 1 



CHAPTER III 

HOW TO SLEEP 

To sleep well is one of your duties. Do not cul- 
tivate, do not permit, any of the sentimental non- 
sense which speaks as if sleep were a matter of 
chance, or were out of your control. You must 
sleep well, if you mean to do the rest well. You 
must have body and mind in good working order ; 
and they will not be in good working order, unless 
you sleep regularly, steadily, and enough. Here 
is the reason why one places the command of sleep 
so early in a practical working list of men's duties 
and habits. 

One reason why there is so much vagueness and 
false sentiment in people's talk about sleep, and 
their behavior about it, is. that the true physiology 
of sleep has only been known for the last genera- 
tion. Old Galen, the Greek physician, supposed 
that in sleep the blood-vessels of the brain are 
more heavily gorged with blood than they are 
when one is awake, and this mistake has been 
entertained almost until our time. It is a mis- 
take. Modern researches have made it certain that 
in real sleep, — in the sleep which refreshes and 
renews, — the blood is largely withdrawn from the 
brain. "Stupor" is what follows when the blood- 



212 How to Live 

vessels of the brain are over-gorged. In sleep they 
contain not more than three-quarters of the blood 
which is in them when you are awake. 

The old farmer was perfectly right, who used, 
before he went to bed, to draw off his boots, and 
to bring his feet as near the coals on the hearth as 
he could without scorching his stockings, so that 
he might be ready to sleep as soon as he got into 
bed. If the old man said he did it " to get the 
blood off his brain," he showed that he knew more 
than old Galen did. And — so far as our physi- 
ology goes — all our effort in securing sweet sleep 
must be turned to this business of withdrawing 
blood from the circulation of the brain. When, 
on the other hand, you find that your head is on 
fire, — nay, that it almost sets the pillow-case on 
fire, — and that you lie in bed, pitching and toss- 
ing like an anchored ship in a heavy gale, it is 
because you have neglected the proper precau- 
tions, and the circulation of blood in your brain is 
going on with undue rapidity and intensity. 

Try to regard sleep as a duty. Then, just as 
you would be ashamed and mortified if you were 
the father of a family, and found in the morning 
that there was no wood for the fire, no water for 
the kettle, no bread, no butter, no flour, nor any- 
thing to eat, so you feel mortified and ashamed if, 
when night comes, you do not feel the prompting 
and the power to sleep. Oh ! yes, I know all about 
the exceptions. I know, in the one case, that 
there may have been a freshet, and that the kitchen 



How to Sleep 2 1 3 

and the store-room may have been taken down the 
creek to the river, and down the river to the Gulf 
of Mexico, and through the Gulf of Mexico to the 
sea. And I know, in the other case, that some 
dear friend of yours may be hanging between life 
and death, and you waiting for the messenger who 
shall tell you which befalls. There are always 
exceptions. But, granting the exceptions, you 
ought to be as eager to sleep as to eat your din- 
ner, as able to sleep as to eat your dinner. And 
if you find you are not, do not pet the derange- 
ment of your life; do not sit reading a novel or a 
newspaper till the sleep comes; but study care- 
fully the causes of failure, and be sure so to cure 
that disease that with the time for sleep shall 
come the desire. 

Do not place any confidence in the old laws 
which limit the amount of sleep. There are such 
old lies as " six hours sleep for a maid, and seven 
hours sleep for a man." Take all you need, and 
do not let any one tell you how much you need. 
You will know better than any one else. The rule 
is correlative to the rule for work. Thomas Drew 
stated it thus: " You have no right in any day to 
incur more fatigue than the sleep of the next night 
will recover from." 

I am taking it for granted that you can do as 
you choose in this matter. I am taking it for 
granted that you have a Will about it, and can use 
that Will. That is to say, I take it for granted that 
you are a child of God, who can WILL AND Do 



214 How to Live 

what pleases him. Now, it pleases him that you 
shall wake every morning as fresh and happy and 
cheerful as that bird awakes which you hear sing- 
ing when your eyes first open. It does not please 
him that you shall wake doubtful, tired, unwilling 
for a new day. 

We have come to the first duty in our examina- 
tion, " How to Live." We must here squarely 
resolve to do that duty though the sky falls. " I 
WILL." There is the whole thing; if we cannot do 
that, we may as well stop before we begin. 

I. I will sleep. What is needed for that physi- 
ologically? It is needed that the blood shall 
gently, easily, and steadily leave my brain; and 
this, probably, for some hours before the time for 
sleep comes. Then, I must not be working my 
brain on difficult problems up to the last moment, 
and then turn brutally round on it, and say, " Stop 
working." 

In especial, you must not undertake late in the 
day anybody's problems of mathematics, say arith- 
metic or other puzzles, if I may call them so. 
Business men who have large trusts to manage are 
forever making mistakes here. Such men as bank 
cashiers feel that they must give the business 
hours to the business of the bank. Then when 
evening comes, they take the two hours before 
bed-time, " So quiet, you know," for their own 
personal affairs, as, to write the letters about their 
own insurance, or to their tenants, or to fuss 
over the housekeeping accounts. You must not 



How to Sleep 215 

do any such thing. The last hours of the day- 
must be for rest and solace to this brain which 
you have been working all day. Better for you, 
if you can give it five or six such hours ; if, going 
to bed at ten, you undertake no serious mental 
problem after four or five in the afternoon. 

" But these things must be done," you say. 
Perhaps they must, though with regard to that I 
am not so certain as you are. If they must be 
done, do them to-morrow morning, between five 
and seven, if you please, or between six and eight. 
Whether they be done, or not done, make sure of 
this, that this good friend of yours, your brain, 
who has done you so much good work, and will 
do you so much more, has five or six hours of 
easy life every day, before you and he go to sleep 
together. You are not to press him in those last 
hours. You may press him in the early hours of 
the day, with certain exceptions which shall be 
noted in another place. You are not to press him 
after sunset, nay, not in the hours when the sun 
goes fastest down. 

II. When the time comes, and you enter on this 
business of sleep, attend to it with all your heart 
and soul and mind and strength. Here is the bed, 
all ready for you, and you are as ready for it. 
Put out the light, tumble into bed, pull up the 
coverings, and go to sleep. That is what the bed 
is for, that is what you are for. Yes ! If you wish, 
as your cheek feels the cool of the pillow, you may 
thank the good God for his mercies, the pillow 



2i 6 How to Live 

not the least of them, and you may make your 
prayer. This, if you have not done it on your 
knees at the bedside. But that is all. You are 
not to ask yourself whether the day has been a 
good day or a bad day. You are not to review 
the past, or look forward into the future. You 
are not to plan that letter which you will write to 
Allestree about the cattle. You are not to plan 
out the way in which you can move the beds so as 
to make room for Lucinda's children. You are 
not to think of anything but Sleep. You are to 
go to sleep, and, if you can, you are to stay asleep 
until the morning comes. And so soon as you can 
teach yourself that sleep is a duty and a central 
duty, that it is not an accident, an incident, or a 
mere bit of good fortune, the more able will you 
be to keep yourself in training at this critical mo- 
ment, and to refuse all the temptations. They are 
temptations to carry on the business of the day in 
the hours of the night, hours which are reserved 
for a very different affair. 

In nine cases out of ten, if you have left this 
good-natured, hard-working brain to the six hours' 
rest which has been described, you will have no 
trouble in the first three or four hours of the night. 
The practical difficulty begins, for most people 
who are troubled by sleeplessness, at one or two 
o'clock in the morning. This is not the place for 
the description of that trouble so far as it comes 
from indigestion, from dyspepsia, from tea or 
coffee, or from hunger. It does come from these 



How to Sleep 217 

things forty-nine times out of fifty, and they shall 
be spoken of in their place. It is to the fiftieth 
time that the rules apply which you will hear at 
every corner, about occupying the mind with some 
monotonous subject, such as saying the multipli- 
cation table, repeating familiar poetry, looking at 
a flock of sheep, and so on. 

I do not say but these may be used in their 
place, because sensible people use them and offer 
them. Greyford wrote me a long letter once, in 
which he said that the habit of his mind was dis- 
cursive. He said that when he was sleepless, his 
mind ranged over everything in creation, and that 
it was work for him to keep it in the harness, and 
to make it trot within the ruts and on the high- 
ways. So he would compel it to give him, in 
order, three names of kings beginning with A: 
Alexander, Agesilaus, Alfred ; three names be- 
ginning with B : Baldwin, Brian, Beelzebub ; and 
that by the time he got to G or H he was asleep. 
But this would not work for every one; and in 
general you may say of such rules what Dr. Ham- 
mond says, that it is setting fire to half of the 
village by way of stopping the conflagration of the 
other half. The only practical help I ever had 
from such rules was given me by Captain Collins, 
the night before he went to the Amoor River. 
He says, " When you are sure you are not going 
to sleep, open your eyes and compel them to look 
straight before them. If it is pitch-dark, let them 
look into the darkness. If there is a little light, 



2 1 8 How to Live 

let them look upon the tassel or the picture which 
is before them. In a minute the open eye-lids will 
want to shut. " No, when I wanted you to shut, 
when I wanted you to go to sleep, you would not. 
Now you must look at the picture, or the tassel, or 
the blackness. Look ; think picture, tassel, black- 
ness ; and think nothing else." 

I have tried this and with good effect. But I 
have varied on it, by going to the Amoor River in 
my bed to join Captain Collins there, and much 
more often than " I think picture or tassel or 
blackness," I think of a certain log cabin at the 
mouth of that river, of its verandas, and the walk 
down to the stream, and the vines that grew upon 
the verandas, till I am thinking no more. And, 
oddly enough, the other day another man told me 
that he had the same experience at such times. 

But a physical cure is better than all this play 
with an over-wrought brain. Jump out of bed, 
rub yourself heartily with a crash towel or mitten, 
sponge your head thoroughly for two or three 
minutes with cold water, take a wet towel back to 
bed with you, and wind it around your forehead. 
All this, you see, is to drive the blood off the 
brain again. And take this always as a rule in 
life, — that if there is a physical cure, you are to 
use it, — and not seek for a cure in the higher 
regions. Do not go to the minister for his 
spiritual counsel, when a blue pill, or ten pillules 
of hyoscyamuSy will answer. Do not cut blocks 
with a razor. 



How to Sleep 219 

III. If I had the space, I should go quite at 
length here into detailed recipes of prescriptions 
for the control of sleep. For I have been pained 
to learn, since I delivered some lectures on the 
subject more than fifteen years ago, that very 
many Americans suffer from sleeplessness. Our 
eager life, the wide range of our duties, and what 
Mr. Appleton calls the " whip of the sky " drive 
them into an intensity of effort, day and night, for 
which sleeplessness is the revenge. But I must 
satisfy myself by putting a few short notes at the 
end of this paper, and by referring sufferers to 
Dr. Hammond's treatise on Sleep, which they 
will find interesting, instructive, and, if they will 
obey, very useful. Meanwhile, I really hope that 
nineteen-twentieths of the readers of this paper do 
not suffer in this way. It is for them that I write 
what remains. For there is really no need that 
they should suffer. I have said that sleep is a duty. 
It is at the same time a privilege, and everybody 
may have the privilege who will discharge the 
duty. But the duty is all interlinked with every 
other duty in life. You are not going to buy the 
privilege so cheaply as by repeating the multiplica- 
tion table, or by thinking of a flock of sheep jump- 
ing over a wall, or by buying half an ounce of 
bromide of potassium. The privilege means that 
you hold in control your body and your mind, 
which are the two tools of your soul, and that your 
soul knows what it is to control body and mind, 
and how to become master and mistress of them. 



220 How to Live 

Now take an instance. You find, as some people 
do, that if you drink tea or coffee at seven in the 
evening, you cannot compel sleep at one the next 
morning. Or, if you eat a Welsh rarebit of cheese 
just before you go to bed, you find, four hours 
after, that you cannot sleep. Some people can- 
not. Are you now your own master or mistress in 
this matter of the tea, the coffee, and the cheese, 
or are you the slave of tea, coffee, and cheese ? 
That is the square question. And the answer to 
that question throws us back where we were in 
the beginning. It answers what seems a larger 
question. " Are you a partaker of the Divine 
Nature?" or are you only one who, as the Bible 
puts it, " may be a partaker of the Divine Nature " ? 
If you are in this latter class, is it not worth while 
to promote yourself, with God's help, from " may 
be" to "am"? 

"lama partaker of the Divine Nature. I will 
control this tea and coffee and cheese. I can do 
without them and they may do without me." 

I may say just the same thing about the mental 
perplexities which come in the middle of the night, 
and harass one and distress him. John Jones will 
be sure to come to me at eleven o'clock to make 
me indorse that note for him, and what in the 
world shall I say? 

In the first place John Jones and his note have 
no business in this bed. This bed is the altar of 
sleep. I will not receive John Jones here. He 
and his note shall not come into this room. If 



How to Sleep 221 

the American minister in London had led me to 
the Queen's drawing-room, if I had just kissed 
her hand, and if she had just asked me how the 
children were, I should not stop to talk to John 
Jones about his note. He shall not bother me 
here, any more than he would there. 

Or you may put it in the broader statement. 
Everything must conform to absolute Right. 
About John Jones' note there is a Right thing to 
do and there is a Wrong thing to do. When he 
comes to me in the morning I shall have all the 
arguments on both sides before me. What there 
is to know I shall know. And I shall have the 
good God to direct me if I seek him. I will do 
the right thing then. The right thing now is to go 
to sleep, and that thing I will do now. 

The central rule of life is not that we must 
always refer everything to first principles, not that 
we do refer everything to first principles, but that 
we are ready to do so if there is need. That 
readiness makes life simple, easy, and successful. 

NOTES 

1. Dr. Hammond says, and I am sure he is 
right, that many more people lie awake from 
hunger than do so from having eaten too much. 
Recollect how almost all animals go to sleep im- 
mediately after feeding. I shall show in another 
place why I think a short nap after dinner a good 
practice, if you can manage it. This is certain 



222 How to Live 

that many people, perhaps most people, require 
some simple, easily digested food just before going 
to bed. I know people who find an advantage in 
having a biscuit at the side of the bed, to eat in 
the night if they are wakeful. 

In this connection I may quote from Dr. Ham- 
mond his remark that " all American women are 
under-fed." When, in lecturing, I used to repeat 
this at the West, it was received with shouts of 
laughter. But at the East it was regarded as the 
serious expression of a serious truth. I cite it 
here that I may call the attention of people who 
are suffering under the varied forms of " nervous 
prostration" to the question whether they are 
regularly eating and digesting enough, in quantity, 
of simple food. 

2. What I have said connects distinctly with 
Dr. Hammond's axiom, " The complete satisfaction 
of any natural appetite is generally followed by 
sleep or the desire for sleep." 

3. In our habits of life, the use of tea and coffee 
has a great deal to do with sleep or the loss of it. 
It is idle for one person to make rules for another. 
I have only to say that if, after full experience, you 
find they keep you awake, " they must go," to 
borrow the expressive mountain phrase. There 
is, probably, some foundation for the general habit 
which has thrown coffee upon the morning meal, 
and reserved tea for that of evening. But, on the 
other hand, it is said, and I think truly, that the 
sleeplessness resulting from coffee is agreeable, or 



How to Sleep 223 

not intolerable, while the sleeplessness which fol- 
lows tea, is rasping, provoking, and aggravating. 
I believe, myself, that the use of both depends 
very largely on the amount of exercise in the 
open air. I should say to any person who wishes 
to use tea or coffee at the evening meal of the day, 
that he could probably do so in moderation, if he 
was willing always to walk three miles in the open 
air afterward. Of these details, however, I shall 
speak more at length under the head of Exercise. 

4. To the specific recommendations given in the 
text for the benefit of the sleepers, I will only add 
here that you may almost always secure three or 
four hours of good sleep by the use of a hot foot- 
bath, as hot as you can well bear. You may put 
a little mustard into it, to increase the stimulus to 
the skin. Steep your hands in the hot water at 
the same time. All this draws the blood off the 
brain. The use of the hair-mitten, a cool pillow- 
case, or, if you please, a pillow of cold water, has 
the same purpose. 

5. Dr. Franklin was wholly ignorant of the true 
physiology of sleep, and his papers on the subject 
are full of theoretical errors; but some of his 
practical instructions are very sensible, as they are 
amusing. 

6. I wish some ingenious machinist would fit up 
a phonograph to be run by clock-work, which I 
could start, — say at two in the morning, — and 
make it deliver to me one of Dr. Primrose's ser- 
mons, with all his delightful, drowsy cadence. 



224 How to Live 

Failing this, a good musical box which will run 
half an hour without winding, is a convenient piece 
of furniture in a bedroom, especially where there 
are restless children. 

7. The habit of sleeping may be formed very 
early, and should be. If a young child be healthy, 
let no nurse (or anxious mother) sit with it in the 
evening, after it is three months old. Undress it, 
leave it, and let it put itself to sleep. The child 
will thank you afterwards for what you hate to do 
to-day. 

8. An india-rubber bag full of cracked ice, 
ready to apply to a hot forehead, is a good friend, 

— when you have a hot forehead at two o'clock in 
the morning. 

9. But I have found a small flat-iron more con- 
venient. Buy at a toy-shop for ten cents a 
baby-house flat-iron. It need not weigh more 
than half a pound. Tie a string to it, and fasten 
the other end of the string to a bedpost. If you 
do not sleep hold the flat surface to your forehead 

— well, as long as you can bear it; then let it 
drop away, while you enjoy the retreat of the 
blood from the crowded blood-vessels. 



How to Exercise 225 



CHAPTER IV 

HOW TO EXERCISE 

It is quite worth while to read carefully the theo- 
ries of the best Greek authors about education, and, 
of our own race, to go as far back as Lord Bacon 
and Milton and Locke, to see what they say 
about it. For such reading saves us from that 
delusion of our own time which confounds edu- 
cation with book-learning, and almost takes it for 
granted that a man who has read a great deal is 
well educated. Now, any Greek who thought at 
all had a thorough respect for the body, if it was 
only as the physical tool which was to carry into 
effect the conclusions of the mind, and the de- 
mands of the soul. Paul went farther. He recog- 
nized the divinity of man's nature. He knew that, 
as James said, man could be a partaker of the 
divine nature. Paul squarely claims, therefore, 
that the body must be kept pure and holy, be- 
cause it is the temple of the indwelling God. All 
this runs quite counter to the happy-go-lucky 
theory largely prevalent in our time, which sup- 
poses that if you have a doctor to cure the visible 
diseases of the body, the body may be left to take 
care mainly of itself. The average public school 
of America teaches reading, writing, and arithme- 

15 



226 How to Live 

tic, with, perhaps, a smattering of language, a 
smattering of physical science, and, possibly, of 
the higher mathematics. But as to any exercises 
which are to make the eye more sure, the hand 
more quick, the arm more strong, or the man 
more enduring, the average public school knows 
nothing of them. It sends the boys or girls out 
to recess. Perhaps an intelligent teacher airs the 
room, and that is all. The recent " craze," as I 
may call it, in the matter of athletics is a help in 
this matter, but it has its dangers also. 

Indeed, every specialist is apt to think that he 
must make every pupil such another as he is himself. 
A music master will tell you you must practise 
the scales six hours a day. The chief of a gym- 
nasium, who can lift two thousand pounds him- 
self, wants his pupil to lift two thousand pounds. 
The president of an athletic club is eager to have 
some one "beat the records" in running or walk- 
ing or leaping. Every one thus exaggerates his 
own specialty, forgetting that the whole business 
of education is to make a perfect man, well-bal- 
anced, rounded, if you please, and ready to do 
whatever duty comes next his hand. When Starr 
King was in the prime of his youth, not long 
before his death, Dr. Winship was showing how 
men could be trained to lift enormous weights. 
" He does not understand what I need," said King. 
" I have no occasion to lift half a ton, but I should 
like to go 2.40." " Two-forty " was then the stand- 
ard for fast trotting, and King meant that he 



How to Exercise 227 

wanted to do promptly and well, in the best way, 
what he had to do. Here, in an epigram, is the 
statement of what one's " exercises " are for. They 
are the use of a part of every day so that, when 
duty comes, one may be ready for duty. And a 
man will not be ready for duty unless he has ex- 
ercised in such fashion as shall make him ready. 
Young people read novels, and they fancy that 
when the time comes they will do as well as 
Harry or Jane does in the story. When you are 
presented of a sudden to Mr. Gladstone, you 
expect to answer his questions as readily as Harry 
did when he had that charming talk, in the book, 
with the Lord Chancellor. It will not come out 
so. Amadis stood three days on the bridge, 
holding it against all comers. But he could not 
have done this if he had not trained himself 
every day in all the exercises of knighthood. 

There may be bodily exercises ; there are exer- 
cises of memory, imagination, and other forms, 
which we rate as simply mental; and there are 
spiritual exercises beside. Of these, I give this 
paper to some hints on bodily exercise, and when 
I write " How to Exercise " at the top, I do so 
because, in the ordinary language, exercise has 
come to be spoken of as if it related principally 
to the body. But, in derivation and in original 
use, exercise implies the experience which one 
gains in the repetition of any action. 

1. People ask at once how much time should 
be given to this series of exercises or to that ; how 



228 How to Live 

much to study, how much to memory, how much 
to walking or to riding. I shall answer this ques- 
tion from no ideal standard of what one would 
like, or of what they do or do not do in Paradise, 
in Utopia, or in Sybaris, but with simple refer- 
ence to what can be done in the ordinary life of 
this country. 

For there exists among us, quite low down and 
fundamental in our arrangements, the necessity of 
earning our living, and, whatever a man wants 
or does not, and whatever John Milton or Pesta- 
lozzi or De Gerando says he had better do or 
not, the probability is as nine to one that he has 
to go to the mill or the store or the shop or the 
field every day, and work at some work or other 
in " subduing the world." The probability is that 
he must do this for eight or ten hours each day, 
and he may have to give more hours. I hope not. 
I hope, indeed, that we shall come round to the 
average of an eight -hour system by and by for 
all work which a man does in his craft, trade, or 
profession, so that he may feel at ease, with a 
good conscience, to give some of his waking hours 
to some "exercises" which will train his body, 
mind, and soul, beyond and outside the exercise 
which they gain in his daily calling. 

I give such advice as is to be found in this 
paper, remembering this restriction. I have al- 
ready said a man must do the duty that comes 
next his hand. Now that duty may be the keep- 
ing a set of books. It may be the watching a 



How to Exercise 229 

shuttle as it flies backward and forward in a 
loom. It may be sitting in a chair all day, and 
purifying mercury. For the exercise of his body, 
such a man must take time outside this daily 
requisition; for some exercises of his mind, he 
must take such time; and for some exercises of 
his soul. 

I am apt, then, to advise people who ask my ad- 
vice in such things to limit their resolutions about 
them at the first, to the control of three hours a day, 
outside those which are given to what may be called 
the daily vocation. If a man's daily vocation keeps 
him in the open air, exercising his muscles, his 
nerves, — or in general his body, — the three hours 
need not be given to physical exercise. If, on the 
other hand, they are given to indoor work, as in 
the cases described, he will need to give much of 
his three hours to physical exercise. He must 
give a fair share if he means to be a perfect 
man. He must have his body up to a working 
standard. He does not gain that by resolving. 
And he has no right to expect any answer to 
his prayers, unless he fulfils the part God requires 
of him. 

" Two men are in a canoe in the Mozambique 
Channel. A sudden flaw of wind upsets the boat. 
Before they can right her she fills with water and 
sinks; and the two men are swimming for their 
lives. ' Ah, well ! ' says one of them to the other, 
' it is a long pull to the shore ; but the water is 
warm and we are strong. We will hold by each 



230 How to Live 

other, and all will go well/ ' No/ says his friend, 
1 1 have lost my breath already ; each wave that 
strikes us knocks it from my body. If you reach 
the shore, — and God grant you may ! — tell my 
wife I remembered her as I died. Good bye ! 
God bless you ! ' — and he is gone. There is 
nothing his companion can do for him. For 
himself, all he can do is to swim, and then float, 
and rest himself, and breathe ; to swim again and 
then float, and rest again, — hour after hour, to 
swim and float, swim and float, with that steady, 
calm determination that he will go home ; that no 
blinding spray shall stifle him, and no despair 
weaken him ; hour after hour, till at last the palm 
trees show distinct upon the shore, and then the 
tall reeds, and then the figures of animals ; — will 
one never feel bottom?" Yes, at last his foot 
touches the coral, and with that touch he is safe. 
That story that man told me. I copy it here 
because it shows, in a good concrete case, what 
exercise had done for one man which it had not 
done for the other. Both of them, for all I know, 
had strength, bravery, and prudence; but one of 
them had exercised his body in the essential ex- 
ercise of swimming, and the other had not. When 
the test came, one knew how to live, and the other 
went under. 

. I certainly do not expect to give much advice 
in detail in regard to the several exercises of the 
body which a boy or a girl, a man or a woman 
would do well to keep up, daily, weekly, yearly. 



How to Exercise 231 

Lives differ so much that the advice for one man 
would be quite different from that for another. 

The directions for most women — as we live, 
would be different from that for most men. But 
there may be stated a few things which are central, 
or fundamental : — 

I. To live well, you must be in the open air 
every day. This rule is well-nigh absolute. 
Women offend against it terribly in America. 
And women are very apt to break down. Rain 
or shine, mud or dust, go out of your house, and 
see what God is doing outside. I do not count 
that an irreverent phrase which says one feels 
nearer God under the open sky than he is apt to 
do when shut up in a room. I know a very wise 
man who used to say, " People speak of going 
out, when they should speak of going in." He 
meant that you do plunge into the air, as when 
you bathe at the sea-side you "go into" the water. 
Be quite sure of your air-bath. I will not dictate 
* the time ; but, on the average, an hour is not too 
long. You will fare all the better, will eat the bet- 
ter, digest the better, and sleep the better, if in- 
stead of an hour it is two hours or more. 

A good many other things go with this. Form 
the habit, if you have regular reading to do, of 
reading in the open air. Find a nook in some 
corner of the house, — on the outside of the 
house, — or between two great rocks, where you 
can sit in the sunshine, even in late autumn or in 
the winter, and read your Chautauqua lesson under 



232 How to Live 

the open sky. Very likely you will find at first a 
certain strain on your eyes. You must, of course, 
be careful about this. But ask yourself whether 
your eyes were made only for rooms lighted by 
one or two windows, and whether they ought 
not to be exercised up to daylight. 

2. Those people who are fortunate enough to 
read these papers on the western side of the Al- 
leghanies, will, in most instances, be fortunate 
enough to have each a horse at command. Such 
is one of the every-day luxuries of those States 
which rule America ; and one of the reasons why 
they rule America is that their people are tempted 
to live so much in the open air. If you are so 
fortunate, there is, I suppose, no exercise better 
for health than horseback-riding, whether for man 
or for woman. The rest of us, excepting the few 
who have bicycles at command, 1 have to walk as 
we take our air-bath. 

Walking does not, of itself, exercise all the 
muscles. Running is much more approved by 
the authorities. I happen to know that Helm- 
holtz, the great German physicist, recommends 
daily running as the best treatment, where there 
is any tendency to congestion of blood on the 
brain. Military drill has immense advantages. 
This nation has gained a great deal in the supe- 
rior carriage of its men since the civil war. I could 
wish that the teachers of girls' schools would do 
something for their pupils which approaches it. 
1 This was in 18S6. 



How to Exercise 233 

Sweeping a floor is admirable exercise, and you 
know Herbert says : — 

" Who sweeps a room as for thy laws 
Makes that and the action fine." 

3. No exercise, perhaps, can be compared to 
swimming; but generally in our climate we can 
enjoy it only a few months in the year. All women 
should learn to swim, as well as all men. It is 
really unfair to their brothers or their husbands if 
they do not. 

4. Another set of questions will come up, which 
different people will answer in different ways. I 
have simply to remind my readers that they must 
be answered in some way. For instance, a man or 
woman must be in good training for walking. If 
the man be a postman, the government will expect 
him to walk twenty miles a day. If he be a light- 
infantry man, he must be able to walk fifteen miles 
a day, and to carry a knapsack, cartridge-box, and 
musket. Now, what is the requisition for a gentle- 
man or lady in ordinary life, who is not a postman 
or a light-infantry man? 

The answer would be different in England from 
what it is here. Their climate on the whole per- 
mits of walking more than ours, and they are on 
the whole trained for longer walks than we are. 
Here, I should say that every man ought to be 
able to walk six miles a day without any sense of 
extra exertion or fatigue — I know no reason why 
a woman should not. Indeed, I think it would be 



234 How to Live 

much better for the women of this country if they 
were all trained to this standard. As these pages 
pass the press, I see that President Eliot tells the 
freshmen of Harvard University that they ought 
to be able to walk ten miles a day on the average 
as a matter of course. In the same address, he 
says that a man should be able to hoe potatoes for 
three hours without any sense of fatigue. 

5. But it must be understood in all such sug- 
gestions that we are not urging you to use up 
your strength on exercise. I am not speaking 
as if exercise were your business, I am only speak- 
ing of preparation for your business. If your busi- 
ness is study, keeping store, taking care of child- 
ren, making boxes, shoeing horses, you are to use 
your vital force, your strength, for those duties. 
You are not, under the pretence of exercise, to unfit 
yourself for the duties of the day. I once knew 
a club of young enthusiasts, men and women, who 
used to walk before breakfast summer mornings. 
It is an exquisite time of day, and they had what 
the New England dialect calls " beautiful times." 
But when they came back after two or three 
hours, and ate a sumptuous breakfast, as they 
used to, they found themselves quite unfit for 
the duties of the day, for making clothes, writ- 
ing sermons, advising clients, or painting pictures. 
This is what in slang phrase is called " running 
exercise into the ground." Such exercise is no 
longer preparation for living. Remember all 
along that our business is to keep the body up to 



How to Exercise 235 

the highest point, that we may get from it all the 
work we can. 

6. And remember, in the arrangement of your 
physical exercises, another series of them, which 
does not come at all under the head of athletics. 
I wish I could give more room to speaking of 
them than I can, but I must at least name them. 
People are apt to call them " accomplishments." 
But, as people live in civilized society, some of 
these are as necessary as, in the middle ages, 
swimming or fencing or riding were to a gentleman. 

One of them is writing. Writing is learned and 
is kept up by physical exercise. Every man 
and every woman ought to write well. That is, 
they ought to write quickly, in a handsome hand 
which is easily read. And every man and woman 
can do this by proper exercise of the hand and 
arm, with or without a teacher. I have known 
people who wrote execrably, reform entirely in a 
fortnight's time by working faithfully, as you may 
work, on the copies of a writing-book which may 
be bought for ten cents. 

Every one who can learn to write can learn to 
draw. In fact, writing is rather a difficult sub- 
department of drawing. I think every one should 
train himself to draw accurately, so far as to be 
able to represent in proper proportions what he 
sees. If a man wants a book-case made by a car- 
penter, he ought to be able to make a correct 
drawing of it for the workman, which shall not 
look as if it was tumbling over to the right. The 



236 How to Live 

reason, by the way, that the drawings of unskilled 
people always slant to the right is, that they learn 
to write before they draw. Vertical writing will 
help here as in other ways. 

Exercise in music is another of these accom- 
plishments. Here the test is, do you like it? If 
you like it, you ought to keep it up so far as to 
give pleasure to yourself, or to give pleasure to 
your friends. For here is one more capacity of 
the body, and you have no right to let that ca- 
pacity die out. Remember what the body is, 
what it is for, and who is its master. 

Indeed, if in these three essentials, you will 
carefully keep a fit reverence for the body, you 
will be able, better than I can, to adjust for your- 
self the physical exercises of your life. 

NOTE 

Reprinting this paper in 1899, I am able to cite James 
Russell Lowell on the open-air requisite. In the first of his 
Lowell lectures, recently exhumed by the Rowfant Club, he 
says of the Ballad-Singers that they "had that education 
for uplifting which comes from life in the open air, and from 
that only." 



Appetite 237 



CHAPTER V 

APPETITE 

What has been said relates to the training of 
the body that it may do what man orders. It 
remains to consider another form of training 
which has the same end, but which seeks the 
control of appetites which, if uncontrolled, be- 
come masters, and control the man. 

It is from the neglect of these appetites, and 
from the mastery which they thus attain, that 
there has sprung all that ascetic scorn of the 
body to which I have alluded, and which, un- 
fortunately, still has its part in education, and in 
too many of the plans of religious teachers. 

Take, as an illustration of such sway of these 
appetites and the failure to govern them, this, the 
story of the opium war in China. Keying, a 
mandarin of high rank, was sent to Canton by the 
Chinese government to suppress the illicit traffic 
in opium with the English. He began by giving 
a great dinner party. To this party he invited all 
the first Chinese merchants in Canton who might 
be concerned in the traffic. It was a great 
honor to be invited, and they gladly went. 
When the dinner was over they expected to go 
home ; but they were then courteously informed 



238 How to Live 

by their host that he should ask for their com- 
pany for a longer time. Bedrooms would be 
provided for them, and he would hope to see 
them at breakfast. In fact he provided every- 
thing which a large hospitality could suggest, ex- 
cept opium. They could not have that. The next 
morning some of them began to break down for 
the need of it. Before a day went by, though they 
knew it was death to confess their appetite, they 
were confessing it. If he would only give them 
a little opium, he might do what he pleased with 
them afterward. And the story says that before 
this terrible test was finished, every man of the 
party had broken down. Every man had gone 
so far in this terrible indulgence that he could 
not live unless he might gratify it. They were, 
one and all, at Keying's mercy. 

We are to look at the means for keeping appe- 
tite under control. In every case which can be 
named, the appetite which gains such head is 
God-given, and is, up to a certain point, neces- 
sary to maintain human life. But whether one 
speak of the desire for sleep, the desire for food, 
the desire for drink, or any other desire of the 
body, it may, like a pet leopard or a pet cobra, 
get the upper hand and devour or poison the 
foolish master. I will even include the case of 
the opium-eaters, for there can be no doubt that 
opium has its place. There was an English 
physician in India who said in his enthusiasm 
that opium was God's best gift to man. 



Appetite 239 

Now, in answering the question What are we to 
do with these appetites? I group my suggestions 
under two heads. 

I. I speak of the TESTS of the machine, for it is 
all-important that you know where you are. For 
this, especially in early life, a man or woman needs 
certain tests. They may be compared to the oc- 
casional experiments which the driver of a loco- 
motive makes to see where the water is in his 
boiler. If his engine has no index to teach him, 
he will open a vent from which will issue water or 
steam. He will then know whether the water or 
the steam is above that line. Now, strictly speak- 
ing, the man wastes force in opening this discharge ; 
but he gains very essential knowledge. He learns 
whether the water is high enough or not. If he 
did not know, he might run on till an explosion 
came, and then the steam he had saved would not 
save him or any one. 

In exactly the same way it is well for us all to 
test our bodies and the appetites which ought to 
be our slaves. Try once a month how well you 
feel without coffee. If you can do without it for 
two days, then you may take it up again. If you 
find you are fretful or cross because you have no 
coffee, keep on without it until you regain your 
temper. You do not mean to be a slave to your 
coffee-pot. I give just the same advice to smokers. 
For myself, I wish they would not smoke at all. I 
think the habit brings in a train of other habits. 
I fancy Keying' s opium slaves began with slavery 



240 How to Live 

to tobacco. But the injunction I give to smokers 
is, test yourself. Find out if you are slave or 
master. Go for a week without your cigar or pipe. 
If at the end of the week you are as easy in mind 
and body, as good-natured, as "well-balanced " as 
you were, then you have a right to say to me that 
you were not a slave when the week began. But 
if you cannot say this, then it is quite time that 
you could. If you find you are fretful, nervous, 
excited, low-spirited, uneasy, because a certain 
leaf from Virginia or from Cuba has not been 
rolled up in a certain form and lighted in a certain 
way, then you find that you are very near to per- 
sonal slavery. It is quite time that you threw off 
that slavery, and your test has come none too soon. 
It was from the need of such tests of the machine, 
as I suppose, that the institution of religious fasts 
came in. Here is a man who says he is in training 
to go into the wilderness and preach the gospel. 
If he does go, he will have to wear the same clothes 
night and day for months ; he will have to live on 
the coarsest food ; he will have to sleep on the 
ground. Can he do it? Let us try him before he 
goes. Do not let us send on a business of the first 
importance a man who, when he comes to his 
place of work, will be whimpering and worrying 
because he has no roast goose and apple-sauce for 
dinner, and no feather-bed to sleep upon. Here, I 
think, was the origin of the rules of fasting imposed 
upon priests and monks. And I suppose these 
passed from them to other persons who hoped to 



Appetite 241 

gain their sanctity. Other fasting originates in the 
remark early made, that the mind is more clear 
when people have not taken an overdose of food, — 
which the savage is very apt to take. 

Now this test of the man who offered himself for 
important duty is wholly legitimate. I know re- 
ligious bodies which profit by it now. In most 
Roman Catholic institutions for the training of 
priests, the young student lives in a barrack which 
is by no means agreeable or luxurious. His food 
and clothes are of the simplest kind. He is never 
alone ; he always has one, two, or perhaps forty 
companions. By such discomforts he is trained at 
that age when habits are most easily formed. Now 
there are very few posts in life in which that man 
can afterward be placed, in which some of the 
most important conditions shall not be decidedly 
more agreeable. In a mission among Indians, he 
can have his own cabin. He will probably make 
for himself a better bed, and it will not be long, 
indeed, as he improves the civilization of the peo- 
ple under his charge, before he has better food on 
his table, or, at the least, a more varied bill of fare 
than he had at the seminary. That man learns 
something in his theological school which Andover, 
New Haven, and Auburn do not always teach. 

Here is the advantage, in our education of young 
people, of giving them a chance to go camping 
out sometimes. Let them learn how bad the coffee 
is which they make themselves, and they will not 
be so apt to abuse Bridget that her coffee is not 

16 



242 How to Live 

better. Let them see how hard it is to bring the 
fried fish and the toast to the table, hot, crisp, and 
unburned, and they will not be so often discon- 
tented with the varied courses of their home 
breakfast. 

I once tried to comfort a forlorn mother whose 
two sons were going to the war, by talking to her 
of the education of a campaign. " I should like 
to know what Dick and John are to learn," said 
she. I said they were to learn how to eat their 
rice out of the same tin can in which they had 
made their coffee, and to be thankful that they had 
rice, coffee, and can. Well, she was willing to ac- 
knowledge to me that both of them were a little 
particular if the buckwheat cakes were cold when 
they came late to breakfast. When I heard of the 
young men next, when war was over, they were 
great leaders of industry on the western frontier. 

Test yourself where you can test yourself safely. 
If you think you will have to walk across a river 
on a felled pine tree, try walking upon a pine tree 
when and where there is no river below you. 

Is my appetite as good as it was when I was 
eighteen years old and was glad to breakfast or to 
dine on such food as we had at the boarding-house 
in Cranberry Centre, or in the forecastle when we 
were fishing on the banks? Or can I only keep 
good-tempered when I have turtle-soup for my 
dinner, with all the accessories of Delmonico's ? I 
ought to be able to answer these questions, and any 
test by which I can answer them will be a help to me. 



Appetite 243 

II. But, alas ! there are only too many instances 
in which no experimental test is needed. Life 
has been the test. The husband and the wife 
have both found that he is cross when the bread 
is sour. Or the master has found that the clerk 
is late at the store, that he missed the morn- 
ing train which should have brought him in ; and 
it proves that he cannot tumble out of bed in time 
in the morning. Or, worst of all, John or James 
finds out that when Dick or Harry meets him on 
the street, and asks him if he will not look in at 
Bet's to " have a drink," he does not say no. He 
" looks in " too often, and it is clear to all men 
that his appetites control him, and he does not 
control them. 

Here comes the second half of our subject. 
How is the man, who should be the ruler, to re- 
gain this lost mastery? 

1 . In the first place, he must try. He must want 
to do it. Nobody else is going to do it for him. 

Here, I think, we may generally trust him. I 
think that in the effort to reform intemperate men 
we generally waste time on this part of the busi- 
ness. My experience has shown me that no man 
knows the curse and tenor of drunkenness more 
thoroughly than the drunkard himself does. 

I was once lecturing in a course on the " Divine 
Method of Human Life." In the course, one lect- 
ure was announced on this very subject of 
" Appetite." That was the whole announcement. 
Nothing was said of temperance or intemperance, 



244 How to Live 

except as that one word indicated it. When I rose 
to speak, I saw at once, in my audience, three men 
who had never been at any of the other lectures. 
Nor did they ever come to any of the after lect- 
ures of the course. I knew in an instant why 
they came. They did not know each other. 
They had come without any mutual communi- 
cation. But, as it happened, I knew them. 
Each of the three had broken down in intemper- 
ance. Each of the three had pushed to that ter- 
rible verge which is called delirium tremens, and 
they knew what that is. Each of them had seen 
this word " Appetite " in the newspaper, and he 
knew only too well what that is. Each of these 
three had come round to hear me speak, in the 
faint hope that I might know or suggest something 
which he did not know for the control of appetite. 
I believe that you will find something of that sort 
to be the case with almost all intemperate men, 
perhaps with all of them. They are, of course, 
men of weak will. That is only another way for 
saying that their appetites master them. But it 
does not follow that they are such fools that they 
do not regret the mastery, and do not wish to 
overthrow the master. They are often foolishly 
self-reliant. I said to such a man one day : " You 
will never succeed in conquering this temptation, 
unless you ally yourself to other people in the 
matter, unless you gain the help of sympathy and 
cooperation." He answered very proudly that I 
did not know what I was talking about. He had 



Appetite 245 

seen the folly of drinking, much more thoroughly 
than I had, and he knew more of it. He had re- 
solved. That was enough. He should never 
touch liquor again. And he wanted no one to 
help him in that resolution. Of all which the 
result was that, before a month was over, he was 
arrested as a drunkard in the street; and it did 
not need more than two years to bring about the 
fourth and fifth acts of that tragedy, — his divorce 
from his wife, and his death in delirium tremens. 

2. But I am not writing simply of intemperate 
people. I am writing for and of all people who 
cannot control bodily appetite. I was once sit- 
ting in a large circle of ministers who were dis- 
cussing the central questions regarding "sin," and 
discussing them most eagerly. I turned suddenly 
upon the moderator, and said : " Why do we talk 
about sin? Let us apply what you say to sins. 
What was the last sin which you consciously 
committed? Does what you say apply to that 
sin?" 

He is one of the truest men in this world. And 
he was then. He replied at once : " That is good. 
I will tell you. I was thinking, when I spoke, that 
I lay in bed this morning full ten minutes, when I 
knew perfectly well that I ought to be up and 
making ready for the day." 

As he spoke every man in the room laughed. 
And I think that thirteen men — consecrated and 
true men — confessed that the appetite or tempta- 
tion they had had in mind, in all they had said, 



246 How to Live 

was this wish of " a little sleep, a little slumber, a 
little folding of the hands to sleep." 

Now I have said already — in the second paper 
of this series — what I think of sleep, and how 
highly I prize it. All the more am I sure that a 
man must hold the love of it under his absolute 
control. He must determine. Remember that 
determine is a better word than " resolve." He is to 
fix a term for sleep. He is to fix it, and, where he 
has fixed it, it is to remain fixed. Let me take 
my illustration, then, from this temptation which 
troubled the fourteen ministers. 

You have fixed your moment for rising. It is 
to be at 6.30, or is it to be at 7. Now the fact 
that you say at 9 to-night that you will rise 
in the morning at 7 will help. But that alone 
will not control. Analyzed, what happens is this. 
You say: "I, John Jones, at 9 in the evening, 
being of sound, disposing mind and good memory 
and health, resolve that I will rise from bed at 
7." If this is all, there is nothing to make sure 
that at 7 you do not say: I, " John Jones, 
being of sound, disposing mind and good memory 
and health, resolve that I will not rise till 8." 
You have nothing, so far, outside yourself, against 
which to push your oar. When you are in a boat, 
you can pry against the water, — and so your boat 
goes along. You lift your oar into the air to bring 
it back, and that motion does not send the boat 
backward. But when you are in a balloon, you 
have no water. It is all air. You move your 






Appetite 247 

paddle forward, and then you have to move it 
back, and you do not move the balloon at all. 
John Jones must find something outside himself 
for his oar to push against. 

You will find, then, if six people agree that they 
will breakfast together, and that no one shall begin 
until all meet, that they will hold very closely 
to their agreement. There is then a contract 
which John Jones has made with X and Y and Z 
and A and B. Yes, I know that he may be so 
selfish, which is to say so far gone, that he will 
sacrifice them all ; but the chances are greatly the 
other way. If he is so far gone, here is a very acute 
case of disease, worth his consideration and theirs. 

Here, then, is another case, where we find out, 
as we have done, the value of the " together." We 
find out once more that man is a gregarious 
animal. We find out why the Saviour speaks to 
us so often in the plural number, — why we pray 
to "our" Father, — why the communion of men 
and women with each other is urged so steadily by 
all the masters of life. We find out that we are to 
bear each other's burdens. We find out what dear 
Owen Feltham meant when he said : " I think 
that man will never go to heaven who thinketh to 
go thither alone." 

You are to make yourself, in some way, a part 
of the company,— a partner in its concern. When 
morning comes, and the bed is so warm, and the 
pillow is so soft, and you are so lazy, you are not 
to say, " Really, I would rather stay here than 



248 How to Live 

have warm coffee," or, "Really, I would rather 
stay here than take the train at 8." You are to 
say, " I must be dressed at 7.30, or I shall dis- 
appoint Tom or Mary or Philip, or I shall fail in 
my appointment with Seth or Salome." The 
partnership breaks down if one of the partners 
fails, and you do not mean to be that partner. 

3. Here is the place where I ought to speak of 
diminishing temptation while one strengthens will. 
The Saviour places this part of duty first. He 
tells us to pray that we may not be led into temp- 
tation. He knows that when the spirit is willing 
the flesh is weak. 

Fitzwilliam says, and I think it is true, that 
many a man has strength of will enough to kick 
the bedclothes off, while he has not strength of 
will enough to leave the bed while they are on. 
That is a good illustration of a man's power over 
the temptations which environ him. The Duke of 
Wellington went so far as to sleep on a narrow 
camp-bedstead to the very end of his life. " When 
a man needs to turn over," he said, " it is time for 
him to turn out." I think this goes too far. But 
the theory of the duke is the right one. He did 
not mean to be led into temptation. 

And here is the ground I take in the steady 
battle against the saloon in our villages and cities, 
and against the open bar. I do not think that we 
ought to put temptation in the way of boys or 
girls who have never been tempted, or of weak 
men or women; and, indeed, I know no men and 



Appetite 249 

women who are not weak. So I say that the 
public ought not to sell liquor to be used away 
from home, " to be drunk on the premises," as the 
licenses say. To which the theorists reply that I 
am limiting the citizen in his natural rights. John 
Stuart Mill, for instance, says that if a private 
man wishes to be drunk he has a right to be 
drunk, — that, if he is not an officer of the State, 
the State has no right to control him. I think Mr. 
Mill doubts whether a man has not a right to com- 
mit suicide, though he does not, I believe, express 
himself clearly here. To all which I reply that, 
in suppressing the open bar, the State does not 
open this question of a man's or a woman's right 
to be a drunkard. The State says simply that it 
will not put temptation in the way of boys and 
girls who are certainly under its care ; nor of men 
and women who, having been tempted, have failed 
and fallen, to the great injury of the State, as well 
as of themselves. The State will limit their temp- 
tations as far as it may. 

I was once, when under age, so that I could not 
well command, on a pedestrian excursion in the 
wilderness of Maine. Before we started, an ad- 
mirable guide — I hope he lives to read these 
lines — came to tell me what stores he had laid 
in for the tramp. " I have bought no liquor," he 
said. " You young gentlemen must provide what 
you want." I said that none of the " young gentle- 
men " used liquor, but I said, what I would not say 
now, " You will take what you need." " Ah ! " 



250 How to Live 

said he, " no men take liquor into the woods. 
When lumbermen go into their camp they take 
the best of pork and the best of flour, but they 
take no liquor. If you ever have to work on a 
drive of logs, Mr. Hale, with eleven other men, if 
you are all to be drowned because one of them 
has not his wits about him, you will take care that 
that man has no liquor." This was said to me in 
the year 1841. He added that when the men 
came home in the spring and were paid off they 
might drink; but they could not afford to have 
any one in the company drink while they were 
dependent on each other. I have fancied that in 
this lumberman's reasoning might be found the 
origin of the " Maine Law." 

To return; whatever the appetite you have 
to master, reduce the temptations in whatever 
way you can. Recollect how you broke down 
last, and put out of the way, in advance, the 
temptation that was too much for you then. A 
second victory in such a thing is generally easier 
than the first. 

4. Do not talk too much of your temptation, 
and do not think of it too much. Overcome evil 
with good. If you have been reading low books, 
put them into the fire and provide yourself with 
the best books. Do not put them on the shelf, 
and do not sell them at auction. Sacrifice must 
come in with your determination. 

5. And this implies that you think of others 
more than you think of yourself. To return to 



Appetite 251 

the trial, always present, of intemperance. The 
chief of a great Washingtonian Home told me that 
he never knew a man break up habits of intem- 
perance, while he only tried to break up his own. 
He must try to break up some other man's. He 
must be thinking of that other man, caring for 
him, praying for him, working for him. Then his 
own temptations become less and less, and his 
will stronger and stronger. The history of the 
origin of the Washingtonian Movement in Balti- 
more illustrates this perfectly, and may be studied 
to great advantage. Gough, Hawkins, and the 
rest saved themselves by forgetting themselves 
and trying to save others. 

6. To go back to the first principles again ; all 
you have done by your resolution, even if you call 
it a determination, is to empty your house and 
clean it. You have cleaned it and you have gar- 
nished it. You have bought flowers for it. You 
have sent for new furniture. Very pretty furni- 
ture it is. But are you fool enough to have the 
house empty? Do you not know, has not the 
Master told you, that the devil you turned out will 
come and knock at the door? And if the door is 
locked, he will peep in at the window, and if the 
house is empty, he will jump in at the window. 
And then he will open the door, and put his head 
into the street, and he will whistle, and seven 
devils worse than he are waiting, and they will 
come and enter the house. Yes, and they will 
dwell there. And you, my poor fellow, are worse 



252 How to Live 

off than you were, and this is because you left 
your house empty. 

The moment you determine that you will change 
your life, determine what stimulus shall take the 
place of the stimulus you reject. You will be at 
work for others. You will seek new society. You 
will take new exercise. You will change your food. 
You will change your home, perhaps. Life shall 
be crowded full — too full for the old devil to find 
a corner for lodgment. 

7. All this means, as we found in a similar 
matter before and as we shall find in every detail 
that ever grasps us, that we must make sure of the 
infinite alliance. This is the all-important help. 
It is very well to agree with X and Y and Z, with 
A and B and C, that we will work together to- 
morrow. But it is much more to agree with the 
good God that we will work with him. This is 
the King's work which I have undertaken. I am 
a fellow-workman together with him. I am on his 
staff. Nay, more than that, and better, I am 
his child. When I choose to do so, I partake of 
his nature. If in treading down temptation, and 
in selecting duty, I distinctly choose his work and 
purpose as the end and purpose which I will carry 
out, I shall not fail him, more than the aide of 
Napoleon failed Napoleon in the crisis of a battle. 
And in ways which no man can describe, but 
which no man doubts who has had experience, 
my Father will give me enough of the infinite 
strength to carry me through. 



Appetite 253 

NOTE 

In the matter of intemperance, and the cure of 
it, too much cannot be said of the value, almost 
the necessity, of changing food, and, if possible, 
home, or our other habits. 

Food, in particular, has much to do with this 
matter. If I owned a great factory where the men 
had exhausting work, I would have bouillon, or 
beef-tea, on tap at the door when they went out 
and in, and give it to every man who would drink. 
I am sure I should save, in the end, by the 
temperance of my workmen. 

My dear friend, Olive , who is now in heaven, 

saw with great pain that one of the men who 
came daily to bring her packages to the house, 
from the great warehouse where she dealt, was be- 
ginning to be a drunkard. She knew his employer 
was only too willing to turn him off. She deter- 
mined to save him if she could. She made every 
day for him the glass of temperance bitters which 
was to keep him from looking in at McGullion's 
bar. A few chips of quassia soaked in hot water 
over night and then nicely strained give you the 
" bitters." " Mr. Jones," she said kindly, " you 
have very hard work, and I want you to drink my 
bitters twice a day." Dear child, what would he 
not do if she bade him ? She never forgot to 
have the glasses ready for him, till they wanted 
her for other service, — I doubt if it can be better 
or higher. 



254 How to Live 



CHAPTER VI 

HOW TO THINK 

In a playful little poem by William Barnard, who 
was Dean of Derry a hundred and nine years ago, 
in answer to a challenge from Dr. Johnson, who 
had bidden him improve himself after he was 
forty-eight years old, he selects his teachers. 
Three of them are Sir William Jones, Adam 
Smith, Edmund Burke, and the fourth, Beau- 
clerk. The lines are : — 

" Jones, teach me modesty and Greek ; 
Smith, how to think ; Burke, how to speak ; 
And Beauclerk, to converse." 

The man who should have Adam Smith as a 
teacher in the art of thinking would be fortunate, 
if the teacher could really bring his pupil near to 
his own level. And in the midst of the modern 
philosophizing, I will say to any quiet, intelligent 
person, who does not dislike common-sense, 
that he will find the books of Jones to be good 
reading to-day. 

Capel Lofft says, in his curious book on " Self- 
Formation," that the elder DTsraeli says that no 
person has ever written on the " Art of Medita- 
tion." 



How to Think 255 

I have not been able to find the statement by 
D'Israeli ; but Capel Lofft says that he has spent 
much time in verifying it, and he believes it to be 
true. 

He goes further and says that not one man in 
twenty ever does think ; by which he means that 
very few men think to any purpose or with any 
system. I am afraid that this statement is true. 
Most of the people one meets in the world take 
their opinions ready-made from the newspapers or 
their neighbors or, in general, from the fashion. 

There is indeed a habit, for which two causes 
could be found, of taking it for granted that men 
cannot control their thoughts. It is said squarely 
that thoughts come or go wholly without the choice 
or power of the man. But this is not the theory 
of the great men, of the real leaders. They bid 
us control our thoughts, that is, to learn to think, 
just as we control any other appetites. Paul tells 
us what we are to think of, and he goes on to the 
other matter, which is more dangerous, and tells 
us what we are not to think of. There are things 
which are not even to be spoken of, and with an 
allowable paradox Paul tells what they are. It 
is only writers of a lower grade who seem to take 
for granted that you must let thoughts go or come 
at their reckless pleasure or by the mere chance of 
what may be the condition of the circulation of 
blood upon the brain. Such writers, if they were 
pressed, would have to say that you are not to 
undertake any control of bodily appetites, any 



256 How to Live 

more than you undertake the control of mental 
processes. 

But the truth is that Man is master of mind, and 
master of body, if he WILL. This is the privilege 
of a child of God, and a true man asserts his em- 
pire and uses it. I do not say he can begin all of 
a sudden in such control, if he had never used it 
before. But he can learn how to gain such con- 
trol. He can have more to-day than he had last 
Tuesday, and he can have more next Tuesday than 
he has to-day. This is what is meant by learning 
to think. Thus a man may train his memory to 
do better work for him this year than it did last 
year. True, when the body begins to fail, the 
memory may begin to fail in its mechanical pro- 
cesses, but none the less shall that man find that 
the eternal realities of past life are his. Thus it 
will happen that a man tells you that he cannot 
remember, when he has never taught himself to 
perceive, or to observe. 

Mr. Ruskin goes so far as to say that all which 
we call genius for fine art is simply an admirable 
memory. He constantly recurs to this. Claude 
Lorraine and Turner paint the sky well ; for they 
well remember what they have seen. It seems 
certain that the faculties even of the observation of 
color may be improved by exercise. Any fore- 
man in a dry-goods shop will tell us how fast the 
boys improve in their study of color ; and it is well 
known to oculists that women, because they have 
been trained for generations in matching colors, 



How to Think 257 

have become more precise in this business than 
men are. It occurs to me, as I write, that one of 
the most brilliant and successful colorists I know 
among American artists began life in a dry-goods 
shop. What drudgery he thought it then ! And 
has he perhaps lived to think that drudgery a 
blessing? 1 

We begin then, as we always begin, by demand- 
ing determination ; the will must act, and act im- 
periously. " I will think on this subject." This 
implies what the writers call concentration; just as 
we found that in putting himself to sleep a man 
must make sleep his whole business, — first, second, 
and last, he must devote himself to sleep, — so now 
he must devote himself to thinking on this one 
subject and on no other. There is a great advan- 
tage in the training of our public schools. Boys 
and girls learn to study without attending to the 
work of the school-room ; or if they do not they 
throw away a great opportunity. You ought to 
be able early in life so to concentrate thought 
that in a railway carriage you can close your eyes, 
take up a subject of thought, and hold to it for a 
reasonable time, perhaps till you have done with 
it. At all events you ought to be able to lay by 
the subject for future reference, ticketed, so that 
you may know how far you have advanced with it 
and where you are to begin another time. 

You determine, for instance, to think about a 
protective tariff. How much do I know of it and 

1 The reference is to Mr. Bradford, the painter of Arctic pictures. 

17 



258 How to Live 

where am I ignorant? What are the foundations 
of my knowledge? How sure are they, and where 
can I improve on them ? Now what follows clearly 
and surely on the premises? What is more doubt- 
ful, and how can I solve such doubt? 

I do not believe that it is well to hold on long 
at a time upon the same topic. I think it is better 
to take a subject to a certain point, then to ticket 
it, as I say, and lay it by prepared to take it up 
again. But when you take it up again do not 
begin at the old beginning and go over the old 
ground. Take what you have done for granted, 
and from the point where you are go forward. 

In this matter, as in all other matters where will 
is involved, there comes in the necessity of energy. 
Capel Lofft, if you will look up his book, has a 
great deal to say about this, and goes back to the 
derivations of the Greek words. But it ought to 
be enough to say that you cannot think well unless 
you think with all your might. You cannot think 
lazily. You cannot think if you are half-hearted 
about it. You must somehow take interest enough 
in your work to follow it at the moment as if it 
were the only thing. Unless you work with 
your whole heart, the work cannot be wholly done. 

Without going farther into detail, I must say 
something as to the necessity of the business in 
hand, and I will take the three departments of 
mental activity which we call memory, imagina- 
tion, and argument, or reasoning. Although as 
old age comes on the mechanical processes of 



How to Think 259 

memory may give way, a man who has trained his 
memory will feel himself sure all the same of the 
external realities of his life, though he may not be 
able to recall the letters of their names. So a man 
may train and enlarge his powers of imagination. 
Nay, he must, if he is to make any considerable 
advance in the larger life. Full one half of men's 
failures are due to their lack of imagination, or to 
their neglect to use imagination at the right time 
and in the right way. Once more, every man who 
is rightly and wisely to do his duty in the world 
among his fellows must train his power of argu- 
ment. He must not stand by, helpless, when some 
wordy fool on a platform makes the worse appear 
the better reason. Memory, imagination, reason- 
ing, then, are for us three good examples of the 
great necessity in which we must exercise our 
power. Of these three duties I will speak a little 
more in detail, not dwelling on what a man may 
do in training his perceptions, his power of con- 
centration, his power of statement, or of conversa- 
tion, and a hundred other faculties which come 
under the general statement that the man is to be 
master of the mind. 

First, then, as to memory. Had one no other 
reason for training memory carefully, and keeping 
it in hand, here is the supreme reason ; that one 
must keep ready at every instant of trial the deter- 
minations made in the moments of reflection. As 
I am always saying, Wordsworth defines the hero 
as he 



260 How to Live 

" Who in the heat of conflict keeps the Law 
In calmness made, — and sees what he foresaw." 

The little child untrained comes to his mother 
in grief because he has done wrong, and makes, 
probably, the true excuse, as he sobs out that he 
did not remember. The trained man, trampling 
temptation under foot, does remember. He. re- 
members his resolution, and this re-enforces will. 
There is an interesting thought in the mere ety- 
mology of our word " conscience." • • Conscience " 
is a Latin word, which means the knowledge all 
at once of all the elements involved. If my 
conscience is quick and strong, I know at once, 
and that once is now, all that I can know of this 
temptation. I know to what ruin it brings me; 
I know by what methods I can quench its fire; I 
know how to put my foot upon its head and the 
point of my sword at its throat. I know all this 
now. 

" Conscire " is the Latin verb ; to know at once 
the perceptions of the outward senses, the lessons 
of old experience, and the present verdict of the 
man within. 

Charlotte Bronte refers to this necessity in that 
central passage, where she describes her heroine's 
conquest of immediate temptation. 

" Laws and principles are not for the times when 
there is no temptation ; they are for such moments as 
this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their 
rigor. Stringent are they, inviolate they shall be. If, 
at my individual convenience I might break them, what 



How to Think 261 

would be their worth? They have a worth — so I have 
always believed ; and if I cannot believe it now, it is be- 
cause I am insane — quite insane ; with my veins run- 
ning fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count 
its throbs. Conscience and reason are turned traitors 
against me, and are charging me with crime. They 
speak as loud as feeling in its clamors. Preconceived 
opinions, foregone determinations are all I have at this 
hour to stand by." 

But we need not go to poetry or fiction for our 
examples. The little child of whom I spoke 
comes to his mother, crying, and can only offer 
the apology that " he did not remember " that she 
had bidden him keep away from the stove. If his 
hand be not very badly burnt, she will not be very 
sorry; because she now knows that he will re- 
member better another time. Indeed, what Mr. 
Ruskin says of fine art, we may say of life. That 
all the training by which God is gradually chang- 
ing us from babies into archangels is but so much 
accumulation by memory, more or less completely 
educated. 

But this training of memory and this knowledge 
at one and the same time of the cause and con- 
sequence of the present temptation involves the 
right use of the imagination. The larger life, 
indeed, which is the purpose and object for which 
we live every day, requires me to command and 
control my imagination, to use it on the right 
errands, and to refuse it when it would fain travel 
the wrong way. The world in which I live may 



262 How to Live 

be the cell of a wretched prison, cabined and con- 
fined as was the unfortunate dauphin, the son of 
Louis XVI., or as Kaspar Hauser was said to be, 
so that his prison walls touched him above, below, 
on the right hand and on the left, behind and 
before. 

One is really almost as badly off as he is 
when he is in a crowded railway car after dark- 
ness has come on. I cannot talk to my next 
neighbor because he is a Moqui Indian, I can see 
nothing but the shadows from the smoking lamp, 
I can hear nothing but the clatter of the rail. 
This is hard circumstance. But what is circum- 
stance to a trained child of God living by the* 
divine order. I ought to be able to bid Shake- 
speare meet with Milton here. I may call Charles 
Dickens and Walter Scott into the interview. I 
may select the subject on which they shall talk, 
I may bid them say their say, and I may send 
them on their way. I may summon here all whom 
I have loved most in literature, be they people 
who have lived and breathed, or be they people 
who never had form or weight or visible body: 
such people as Jane Eyre or Di Vernon or Rosa- 
lind. I have them and they cannot leave me. 
The dead nausea of the disgusting car is forgotten, 
and in that prison cell I have enlarged my life to 
journey as I will. 

I spoke of Mme. de Genlis. In her gossiping and 
entertaining memoirs, she goes at length into her 
habit of creating for herself an imaginary society. 



How to Think 263 

The passage is worth the search of enterprising 
readers, though I am afraid the book has neither 
index nor contents. 

Now for the same reason and for the larger life 
which all along we are seeking, you must train the 
faculty of reasoning, that you may have an opinion, 
and that opinion your own. To look on both 
sides and choose the better side, to dissect the 
rhetoric of a demagogue, to strip off his coat of 
many colors, and to show him for what he is, to 
decide between rival plans and to determine one's 
aim, for one's own purposes, by one's own abili- 
ties, — all this is the duty of a man. Without 
this he forfeits a man's privilege. He is a chip 
on the current, whirled down in this flood, whirled 
up in that eddy, or left stagnant in some standing 
pool. How often, alas, one meets a man who 
never knew the luxury of an opinion. He has 
taken his morning impression from one news- 
paper, his evening impression from another. 
Meanwhile he has been the tool and the fool of 
every person who chose to use him, or to tell him 
what to think and what to say. To keep clear of 
that vacancy of life, a true man cares diligently, 
lovingly, for the weapons which have been given 
him, weapons of defence, — yes, and sometimes 
weapons of attack, if need may be. He learns 
how to reason, how to search for truth, how to 
question nature, how to interpret her answers. 
He learns how to arrange in right order such eter- 
nal truths and such visible facts as relate to the 



264 How to Live 

matter he has in hand. He clears and enlarges 
his power of reasoning. 

The power of induction and deduction man has 
because he is a child of God. It is the faculty 
which distinguishes him from the brutes. A body 
of wolves in the Pyrenees may gather round the 
fire which a peasant has left, and will enjoy the 
warmth of the embers. A group of chattering 
monkeys on the rOck of Gibraltar might gather 
so round the watchfire which an English sentinel 
had left burning. They can enjoy the heat ; but 
they cannot renew the fire. They cannot work 
out the deduction which is necessary before one 
kicks back upon the glaring embers the black 
brand which has rolled away. Were it to save 
their lives, they must freeze before one of them 
can deduce from what he sees the law or the 
truth as to what he must do. Here is it that man 
differs from the brute. He can learn. He can 
follow a deduction. He can argue. He can rise, 
step by step, to higher life. 

This he does when he takes the control of 
thought. He rises to a higher plane and lives in 
a larger life. 

There is no neater or better illustration of the 
way in which a wise teacher draws out the think- 
ing faculty of a- child, than that which Warren Col- 
burn borrowed, from Miss Edgeworth, I believe, 
to place in the beginning of that matchless oral 
arithmetic which still holds its place in many well 
regulated schools. The advantage which the think- 



How to Think 265 

ing faculty gains from good training in mathe- 
matics cannot be overstated. A master in that 
business 1 used to say to me that, when you meet 
a man who says that he has no mathematical 
faculty, he is simply a man who was not well 
taught his " vulgar fractions " or his " rule of 
three " in childhood. I am inclined to think that 
this is true. A thousand writers have been eager 
to prove that good grammatical work does the 
same thing, — and I believe that they are right. It 
is just the same mental process by which I build 
up a Latin verb, pronoun, and noun, so that they 
shall express the fact that " George Washington 
had taken off his own hat before he met Henry 
Knox," as the process by which I work out the 
truth that seventy-two apples costing nine cents a 
dozen may be exchanged for two pecks of wal- 
nuts costing three cents and three eighths a quart. 
Why the parallel of the two studies of language 
and mathematics as mental gymnastics should 
have been so much belabored as it has been, I 
have never known. 

This is certain, that no one learns to think without 
thinking. I believe we may say more. I believe 
he must make a business of thinking. He must 
take hold of the control of his thought intentionally, 
resolutely, and energetically. If he does this I 
believe he will think more clearly, and with better 
results next year than he does to-day. 

1 Nathan Hale, Jr. 



266 How to Live 



NOTES 



I. Capel Lofft's book which I have cited above 
is called " Self Formation, by a Fellow of a 
College." It has been reprinted in America, and 
will be found in the large libraries. It is a 
gossiping, entertaining book, professing to describe 
the " history of an individual mind," and has a 
good many practical hints, useful to young stu- 
dents. He is always talking of his great discovery, 
which to most people seems almost a mare's nest. 
Two pages, one in the first volume, one in the 
second, contain the whole of it. It amounts to 
this, — that in reading, you should stop at the end 
of each sentence and " re-flect," turn back on the 
sentence, to be sure that you possess its meaning. 
What follows will be, he says, that you must go 
through it at one breath, or if it be an unusually 
long one, that you give one breath to every mem- 
ber of it. On this business of our breathing, in 
time, he lays great stress, as a good teacher of 
swimming would bid you breathe in proper time 
with your strokes. When, in the second volume, 
we come to the great secret of the book, it proves 
that we cannot think, unless we think in time with 
our breathing. " I have already stated my con- 
viction that the management of the breath is very 
important in conversation, in studious reading, and 
in oratory. I am just as thoroughly persuaded 
that this is true of meditation, that it governs in 
great degree the thinking faculty. . . ." " I de- 



How to Think 267 

spatched every sentence," as he thought it, " in a 
breath, and then, doubling the blow, — a second 
idea having flowed into the interval of vacuity, 
— I applied myself to it in the same way, and so 
proceeded through the series." 

It is evident that Lofft had never read Sweden- 
borg. If he had, he would have cited the Arcana 
Celestia. " The reason," says Swedenborg, " why 
life is described in Genesis ii. 7, by breathing and 
breath is because the men of the most ancient 
church perceived states of law and of faith by 
states of respiration. . . . Concerning this respira- 
tion nothing can yet be said, inasmuch as it is a 
subject at this day altogether unknown ; neverthe- 
less, the most ancient people (those before the 
flood) had a perfect knowledge of it; " and Swe- 
denborg refers to the same subject in page 1,1 19, in 
the tenth book, of the Arcana. I think that Swe- 
denborg was here referring, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, to Abraham Tucker (Ned Search), where 
he describes the method of inter-communication of 
souls in their " spiritual bodies." 

2. I have not dared go into the systems of what 
is called artificial memory. The best by far, I 
think, is in Gouraud's book, published with a good 
deal of fuss and feathers in New York forty years 
ago. Gouraud remembered everything so perfect- 
ly that we used to call him " the Wandering Jew." 

All these systems depend on using the stronger 
side of memory, whatever it is, to re-enforce the 
weaker. 



268 



How to Live 



3. All that is said on the cultivation of the 
imagination shows the importance of giving to 
children enough fairy-tales and enough poetry 
with which to amuse themselves. 

4. All that is said on the culture of the thinking 
faculty is to be remembered, seriously, by teach- 
ers who are in any danger of using text-books too 
much. The text-book, as an authority, injures the 
child's power to think. Make him work out the 
rule for himself, — if you can. That means, prob- 
ably, if you know how to think yourself. 



How to Study 269 



CHAPTER VII 

HOW TO STUDY 

The perfection of methods of study seems to 
have been attained in the best work of the English 
colleges. A young man who wants to work en- 
gages a special tutor, who is technically called his 
" coach." This gentleman has made it his busi- 
ness to teach certain subjects. He has very few 
pupils, probably no more than four or five. You 
go to him, say, at eight in the morning. You sit 
at the same table and absolutely study with him. 
He gives you his personal help in the process of 
study. You look out your words in the dictionary 
together. Why, he would even show you techni- 
cal details in handling the dictionary, if you needed ; 
he would show you how to arrange your notes, 
and tell you the traditions of the best way to work. 
After an hour of such joint study, you would leave 
and work for three hours alone. At twelve or at 
one, perhaps, you would meet him again and all his 
other pupils, three or four, perhaps. For one hour 
you would then work all together on the subject or 
book which you had been working on separately. 
By such a system you seem to gain every advan- 
tage. You work with a superior, you work alone, 
and you and your peers work with a superior. 



270 How to Live 

You must be dull, indeed, if you do not find in 
such a method full stimulus. The plan in such an 
outline as I have made gives, probably, the best 
period for daily work on books. Five hours such 
study is enough. You might read all day. Read- 
ing can hardly be called work. But reading with 
the purpose of study is quite a different affair from 
reading for mere amusement. When you are 
really working you had better not attempt more 
than five hours a day. And I do not believe in 
varying from the average. Of course there may 
be excuses for such deviation. But one should 
not plan with any idea of making occasionally 
what the French call a " turn of force " with which 
to overtake your omissions. College boys are apt 
to loaf through half a term, and think to make 
up by cramming at the end. You cannot do it. 
It is hard to loaf at the beginning of a day's march, 
and make up by a stiff pull in the evening. But 
that plan is much more likely to succeed than is 
the corresponding effort which treats the brain to 
a turn of laziness, and proposes to pick up dropped 
stitches by a spurt at the end. 

We know curiously little about the methods of 
brain work. But we do know this, that the brain is 
very sensitive, and that its full faculty is very soon 
exhausted. Thus the best teachers of short-hand 
will tell you that when you have practised fifteen 
minutes on that art you had better wait — per- 
haps till the next day — before you practise again. 
In the same way Mr. Prendergast, the great teacher 



How to Study 271 

of language, says squarely that the power of ac- 
quiring words by memory is well-nigh exhausted 
in fifteen minutes. After you have studied so 
long on his exercises, he would like to have you 
wait for one or two hours. A friend of mine who 
studied with him went to him six times a day ; the 
result of which was that at the end of six weeks 
this gentleman could speak German, though he 
understood nothing of it before. How sadly this 
makes me watch those wretched school exercises 
in which, after three unbroken hours, perhaps, the 
poor sensitive brain of the jaded child is expected 
to turn out as much and as good work as it did at 
the beginning. But this only applies to one line 
of study, which is, indeed, comparatively unim- 
portant, namely, the committing words to mem- 
ory. Fortunately, we have not a great deal of 
this to do. Even the difficulty of learning language 
is much exaggerated. And it is in learning lan- 
guage that this memory business, in its mechani- 
cal forms, is most called upon. Now, let it be 
observed that few of us in daily life, in what we 
speak and hear and write in letters, use more than 
three thousand words. Three thousand words is 
a very good vocabulary, whether for speaking or 
for understanding the speech of others. Suppose, 
then, that in learning a foreign language you learn 
thirty words a day. You must learn them thor- 
oughly. You must not forget them. Day by day 
you must review and refresh your knowledge of 
them. In one hundred such days you will have 



272 Flow to Live 

learned the three thousand words necessary for the 
vocabulary of your knowledge of a new language. 
In the same time you must learn the declensions 
of the nouns and the inflections of the verbs. 

When one is in a foreign country he does this 
without much thought. He reads the words on 
the signs of the shops. He hears the talk of cab- 
men and omnibus-drivers. He has to order his 
own meals at times, or to give his own instructions 
about luggage. The reason why we spend years 
at home in gaining a poor smattering of some lan- 
guage which we might learn well in four months, 
is that at home we have, perhaps, a teacher who 
knows very little of what he teaches, and also that 
we turn away from the lesson in language to do 
something else, and think of something else, and 
come back to it almost as to a new and strange 
affair. 

I think myself that we spend too much time in 
most of our schools in the study of language. 
When I was in Buda-Pesth, I asked a Hungarian 
gentleman, who was of just my own age, how he was 
taught Latin, a language which he spoke as easily 
as his own. He said he was sent to school at 
eleven years of age, and was told there that if, 
after a month, he was heard speaking any language 
but Latin, he would be whipped. You may be sure 
he learned a thousand words of Latin before that 
whipping period came. He was surrounded by 
boys who spoke it, his teachers spoke it, his books 
were written in it. You may almost say he could 



How to Study 273 

not help himself. We generally reverse all this. 
We keep the boy in an atmosphere of English. 
A teacher who has read only as much Latin in all 
his life as there is of English in two volumes of 
Dickens, undertakes, at intervals, to teach the boy 
a language of which he does not know much him- 
self; and the usual result is that at the end of six 
or seven years of such mistaken effort, the boy 
throws the language over and says he does not 
care for the classics. We are apt to teach French 
in much the same way. How many girls are read- 
ing this paper in the Chautauqua course, who were 
compelled at school to " study French," perhaps for 
five hours in a week crowded full of other things ? 
The result in this case is a slight acquaintance 
with the outside of the language, no confidence in 
it, no love of it, and not sufficient real knowledge 
to enable the student to read a French magazine 
or newspaper easily. It seems to me that it would 
be better, often, for the student to put off French 
entirely, till it will be convenient to give three 
months to it, and to nothing else, and then so 
to make herself mistress of the language that 
she can use it familiarly, almost as she uses her 
mother tongue. For this reason I always advise 
young people who have any control of their own 
studies, not to attempt at school the rudiments 
of two languages at one time, in general to 
study few languages at school, and to study 
those as thoroughly as the circumstances make 
possible. 

18 



274 How to Live 

I. We will return now from the study of lan- 
guage — which is merely an accidental detail — to 
what is much more important, namely, the general 
range of study by which we are to gain more 
knowledge of the truth than we had before. 

We are not all of us so fortunate as to be able 
to work under the daily direction of first-rate 
teachers. I like, however, to call the attention of 
Chautauquan readers to the advantage which our 
system of work gives them. They generally can 
enlist the other advantage of those English college 
students, which is the prime advantage, indeed, of 
all college systems. I mean the sympathy and 
co-operation of other persons who are studying 
the same thing at the same time. I should not 
ask for many such associates, nor advise any one 
to seek for many. Three or four, I think, are 
better than nine or ten would be. But four peo- 
ple, one on each side of the same table, with the 
books of reference, the maps, and the paper and 
ink between them, make an admirable force for 
study, and, if they choose, they can achieve as 
much as can well be achieved in the same time. 
The good guessers will help the bad guessers ; the 
imaginative will help the unimaginative; the prac- 
tical will spur up the dreamers; and the dream- 
ers will quicken the ideas of the practical. They 
must not quarrel. They must not be cross. No 
one must ever be cross, and no one must ever 
quarrel. But, granted this conquest of the im- 
perfections of mortal nature, those four students 



How to Study 275 

are greatly to be envied by people who have to 
study alone. 

The great danger to the student in our time is 
that he shall over-estimate the value of books, and 
not examine for himself or think for himself. The 
book carries an audacious pretence in its mere 
form. It seems impossible that mere trash shall 
have succeeded in writing itself, printing itself, in 
compelling somebody to read its proof-sheets, and 
at the last, in securing a good binder to put a 
good cover on it, and an honest book-seller to 
sell it to me for money. But alas ! all this does 
happen. No man who knows anything dares say 
how large a portion of what is in books is worth- 
less. And the more arrogant the book and the 
more bold its tone, the more certain is it that it is 
worthless. 

The student, then, must always be on his guard 
against being the slave of his book. The book is 
a witness on the stand, presumed to be honest, but 
perhaps dishonest; a witness, however, who has 
probably had better opportunities than the reader, 
as to the matter in hand. The student is fortu- 
nate if there exist within his reach two books by 
different men, who look at his subject from differ- 
ent points of view. It is thus that the stereoscopic 
method of observation gives roundness and a nat- 
ural effect to what is seen, precisely because there 
are two points of view. We gain such advan- 
tages when we can look through the eyes of two 
authors. 



276 How to Live 

Recollect that generally, not always, you are 
reading to learn something of the subject, and that 
the knowledge of the book itself is only a second- 
ary object. So soon, then, as the book branches 
off on something else than what you are studying, 
you may abandon it. Here is the principle of 
brave and good " skipping " in reading. So soon 
as the writer begins to talk of himself, of his quar- 
rels or of his honors, you may generally abandon 
him, and turn over to find the place where he 
becomes a witness again. But, of course, it may 
be your object in reading to learn about the author 
himself, whether he is a poet or a philosopher, a 
man of sense or a fool. 

It is a good practice to make your own index to 
the book you read, noting, on a fly-leaf at the end, 
those points which you yourself may be specially 
apt to need in the future. The notes are so many 
helps for your future reference, when you shall 
take down this book some day to find what its 
statement is. With a little practice you can make 
this index nearly alphabetical. Here is a speci- 
men which will, I believe, explain itself. 

Index to Vol. IV. of Carlyle's " Frederick the 
Great." 

American Anarchy, 236. 

Automaton Chess Player, 420. 

Confederation, 314. 

Free Trade, 270. 

Globe of Compression, 235. 

Lee's Papers, date of, 434. 



How to Study 277 

Pulaski, 329. 

What is Vienna MS.? 114. 

I speak with a certain hesitation about the use 
of commonplace books or any sort of index in 
which a student attempts to make his own per- 
sonal encyclopaedia of things which he has read 
and thinks he may need to use. I kept such a 
book when I was a young student. It makes two 
large volumes now, and I often refer to it. But I 
have observed that since I have had much work to 
do I never make an entry in it. And I believe 
that such will be the experience of most students. 
Robert Southey is the only distinguished excep- 
tion whom I remember, among English students 
of our time. His commonplace books are so 
curious that fhey have been published. 

Probably the rule applies here which John 
Adams lays down for all diaries. He says that we 
only write diaries when time is plenty with us; 
but that, as soon as we have anything to tell worth 
telling, we have, alas ! no time to write it down. 

Perhaps it will be safe to let this rule work, and 
to make no attempt to fight against it. Let the 
young scholar who has time enough keep a book 
in which to refer to such things as he supposes he 
may need. Let him never copy into this book 
anything for other people to see or use. It is sim- 
ply for his own purposes. Let him index this 
book carefully, by any of the convenient processes 
which have been invented by John Locke, and by 
many others. Into such a book he will copy, with 



278 How to Live 

great reserve, the heads of what is vitally impor- 
tant in his reading, especially what he finds in 
strange places, where he would be apt not to look 
for it. A similar book may hold important cut- 
tings from newspapers. But they are all useless, 
unless regularly indexed. 

An accomplished friend of mine 2 has his own 
card catalogue which is his " personal index " to 
those statements which he has thought important 
enough to note in this way. It consists of more than 
ten thousand cards alphabetically arranged, refer- 
ring to as many as ten thousand different topics, and 
telling where these topics are handled. This seems 
a very large index. But if, in the reading of every 
day he made only four such notes and put them in 
their places, which would cost him perhaps two 
minutes daily, he would have an alphabetical index 
of fourteen thousand topics in ten years. 

II. This is all our limits will allow me to say of the 
study of books. The habits which I have been 
urging will form themselves, if, at the same time 
with the study of books, the student will have se- 
lected some one line in which he shall be carefully 
studying things ; for the habit of accurate obser- 
vation is an excellent corrective of that lazy dis- 
position to take things on trust which is the 
special danger of mere book students. The great 
naturalist, Agassiz, was forever insisting on this, 
and he has done a great deal for the teachers and 
learners of this country by what he said. 
1 Mr. Frederic Beecher Perkins. 



How to Study 279 

If, for instance, in the spring, you will begin to 
give a little time every day to real observation of the 
growth and habits of caterpillars and butterflies, 
you will find out what it is to learn systematically. 
Suppose you cage half a dozen caterpillars of dif- 
ferent species, watch their growth, their cocoon 
spinning, their changes into moths or butterflies, 
and then observe the history of these ; suppose 
you keep a regular memorandum, day by day, of 
what you certainly know on these matters, and also 
of what you think you know, or conjecture. You 
may, to great advantage, teach yourself to*: draw at 
the same time. Thus, if you have secured a brood 
of caterpillars just from the egg, you will find that 
you can draw an accurate portrait of one of them, 
just as you see him. Make his portrait again and 
again, as he grows, so often as you observe any 
change in him. Or you may do the same thing if 
you are really studying the processes by which 
buds unfold or leaves enlarge and ripen. 

I know an accomplished man who wanted to 
obtain the latest practical information on the sub- 
ject of tanning, an industry in which steady im- 
provement is made from year to year. He knew 
he could not get this from books. Instead of sat- 
isfying himself with books, he advertised widely 
that he would pay a handsome premium for the 
best essay he received from a working tanner on 
the newer processes of tanning. He offered a sec- 
ond premium for the second essay, and a third for 
the third. He got just what he asked for. He had 



280 How to Live 

specially made the condition that he did not seek 
for literary excellence, and he did not propose to 
print the papers. He obtained three treatises, all 
of them, I think, written by men who had educated 
themselves, as we say, which he told me he be- 
lieved brought the science of tanning up to the 
latest point. He told me that these manuscripts 
were to him well-nigh invaluable. Such is an illus- 
tration of the way in which such men as the 
writers of those papers can study a subject without 
the study of books. I do not know the names of 
these three men. But I do know where the cir- 
culation of The Chautauquan will be likely to 
carry these lines. And I take pleasure in saying 
here, therefore, that I have no doubt that these 
three writers have trained themselves to careful 
habits of daily observation, that they have some 
system in recording these observations, and that 
this has given them the ability which they have for 
expression. And I could not have a better illus- 
tration of what I mean by the study of a subject, 
apart from the study of books. 

There is one branch of personal study, where one 
studies the subject and not a book, which I hope 
all students of Chautauqua may, in general, make 
their own. It is the study of the local history of the 
place where they live. Nothing is more pathetic 
and more annoying than the destruction which 
now takes place every year, almost under our eyes, 
of written documents which are of substantial im- 
portance for the history of the country. Besides 



How to Study 281 

this destruction, there is the inevitable destruction 
of landmarks of different sorts, which could at 
least be preserved in drawing for the interest of 
after generations. On the painted rocks of the 
Mississippi, a little above the junction with the 
Missouri, were ancient pictures of which the de- 
signs were so striking that Marquette thought the 
best painters in France would scarcely have done 
so well. The last of these pictures, the Piasa bird, 
is remembered by men now living. There were 
copies of some of them in a hotel in Alton in the 
early days of that city. But, if anybody have any 
accurate copies of these remarkable pictures now, 
he has not, I think, produced them for engraving 
or for study, and there seems to be danger that we 
have lost one of the most curious monuments of 
our early history. Such is one illustration, where 
there are thousands, of the way in which the knowl- 
edge of our own history is dying out. Now it is 
in the power of every student in our course to study 
with care the history of the county where he lives. 
He must question old people. He must look up 
and copy documents. He must be able to refer 
travellers and other inquirers to the proper sources 
of information. 

So satisfactory is such study of a subject itself; 
so much more profitable is it than the mere study 
of books, as books, that you may say quite safely 
that it gives to the student that self-respect which 
any one has who adds to the stock of human in- 
formation. Four times out of five, if you will 



282 How to Live 

choose some line of observation in which you 
have, by whatever circumstance, some little van- 
tage-ground — if you do not take too wide a sub- 
ject, and if you satisfy yourself with some modest 
inquiry — you will know more on that subject at 
the end of a month's honest work than is written 
down for you in any book now in the world. So 
far as that topic goes, you become an authority 
upon it yourself. And thus you have the satis- 
faction of feeling that you are not merely depend- 
ent upon others, but that in this place you can do 
your part, however small that part may be, in the 
work of the great concern. 

I have spoken of drawing as an accomplishment 
in which every student should at least make some 
experiments. A master in the last generation, the 
late John Gadsby Chapman, used to say that 
every one who can learn to write can learn to 
draw. This is true. In general, also, though not 
in some details, you are yourself the best teacher 
you will ever have. Of course you will get the 
best lessons you can, and the best suggestions 
from people who know more about it than you do. 
But, on the whole, the steady work which you do 
day by day, if you will keep it so that you can criti- 
cise it after months have gone by, will teach you 
more than any single teacher can do. Now every 
reader would think it a curious thing if in this 
essay on the Method of Learning I had said it was 
necessary for the student to learn to read or to 
write. I really wish that those who follow me 



How to Study 283 

would regard the learning to draw as a matter not 
to be neglected more than either of the other 
studies. Fortunately, in our time the helps for 
such study are more and more abundant, and no 
one reads these lines who cannot procure all which 
are necessary. 



284 How to Live 



CHAPTER VIII 

HOW TO KNOW GOD 

It has been taken for granted in these papers thus 
far that a man can do much as he really chooses 
to do in the matters which have been considered. 
Thus it has been taken for granted that he can 
give up the use of tea or coffee or tobacco or 
spirits, if he chooses. Or it has been taken for 
granted that he can rise from bed when he chooses, 
or go to bed when he chooses. It has even been 
suggested that he can attain such control of his 
occupations and desires and habits that he can 
sleep when he chooses, though sleep is proverbially- 
coy and wayward, and, as is supposed, dislikes to 
come and go at man's will. 

What right have we to assume that man has 
this power, almost absolute, over the machinery of 
his life? 

Our right comes from this, that man is a living 
and infinite soul, although he lives in a finite body. 
He is the child of God, and may partake of God's 
nature when he chooses. He has, therefore, 
always the resource of infinite power, if he knows 
God well enough and confidently enough to call 
for infinite power to the help of that power which 
he calls his own. He is permitted and encouraged 



How to Know God 285 

to ask for this infinite help in all cases where he is 
to will and do anything pleasing to God. 

It is no part of the business of these papers — if 
it be part of any man's business — to demonstrate 
the being of God or to try to do so. It is presumed 
in the outset that those persons who come to these 
papers for advice believe that God is, that they 
are his children, and that they may partake of his 
nature. But no instructions as to the methods of 
life can go far, without some consideration of the 
ways by which we draw near to him, by which we 
come to know him, even imperfectly, to learn 
what his methods are, and his purposes, so that 
we may wish to will and do what he would have, 
and may carry out that wish. 

Every child of God, indeed, is left in somewhat 
the position in which we may readily imagine the 
son of a great statesman to be when that statesman 
is engaged in critical duty. Such a young man 
may, if he chooses, take advantage even of his 
father's engrossed attention to public affairs, to go 
off on his own amusements, with his own compan- 
ions, for his own purposes and theirs. Shake- 
speare has so represented Henry V., before he was 
king, as indifferent to his father's policy, and even 
as separate from him in daily life. But such a 
young man might be constantly in the work-room 
of his father. He might talk with him even famil- 
iarly of the secrets of the empire. He might 
execute his commissions for him, could copy a 
document, or draft a letter. If he did, if he chose, 



286 How to Live 

he could thus enlarge, by every day's experience, 
his own power of life and of duty, if he really had 
his father's blood in his veins. There is many an 
instance in history where a son, in such intimacy 
with his father, has been able thus to enter into 
his father's life, and to carry from that life new 
strength for the purposes which his father in- 
trusted to him. 

No analogies serve us perfectly when we come 
to speak of God, with whom there is no one to be 
compared. But God is our Father and we are his 
children. We can learn something of him, though 
we cannot learn the whole. We can gain some 
sense of his purpose. All that we know of law is 
that it represents his wish to-day. And we shall 
gain strength for the duty of living and the plea- 
sures of living in proportion as we know him, his 
methods, and his purposes. 

How shall we do this ? How shall we know him ? 

I. What the people say who have lived with 
most success is that we can find God, " if we seek 
for him with all our hearts." These are the words 
of Moses, the greatest man who has yet lived, and 
those words have been repeated by the leaders of 
life. It is quite fair to take again the analogy of a 
crown prince, who is the son of a great king. The 
young man has two courses before him. His father 
has given him a separate establishment. He can 
live in his own home, with his own companions, for 
his own purposes, by his own laws. If these laws 
interfere too critically with his father's laws, there 



How to Know God 287 

will come a break. He will find out that his father's 
laws are stronger than his. But many a crown 
prince has lived on in this way, quite indifferent 
to his father's purposes, and has fancied that his 
father did not seem to take much notice of his 
career, or, at all events, would not call him to ac- 
count. Of which the result is that he does not 
understand his father's plans, is not in any sort in 
sympathy with him, does not know him, indeed, as 
he ought to know him. If he is sent off on a cam- 
paign he cannot enter into his purpose, and is, in 
every way, an inefficient officer in his service. But, 
as has been said, the Crown Prince may make him- 
self acquainted with that service. He may find his 
father every day — for he will never be put out of 
council chamber, of court, or of closet. He may, 
if he chooses, interest himself in his father's under- 
takings, he may even understand the relations of 
one policy to another, and see how the fulfilment 
of one plan makes another easier. 

This is what a great commander like the prophet 
says we must do, if we would find the greatest 
Commander of all. If we want to find him we 
must seek for him. 

In the first place, we must listen and see what he 
has to say. Form the habit of going off by your- 
self at a fixed hour every day " to see what God 
has to say to you." Listen and find if there is not 
some answer, and what that answer is. I have 
known a man who told me he had such a place 
of conference or rendezvous in the attic of his store. 



288 How to Live 

He went upstairs — none of the clerks or boys 
asked themselves why, or to which story he went. 
Of course there were a hundred reasons why the 
master of the store might have to go upstairs. He 
went up and up every morning. No one need see, 
no one need ask why, or did ask. He came to his 
" oratory." In the New Testament it is called a 
" closet." There he could sit on a box he had for 
the purpose; he could let the downstairs cares 
drop off; he could and did forget the prices of 
sugar and flour and candles and the rest; he forgot 
the mail and the unanswered letters so far that he 
could ask what God wanted him to do and to be 
that day. He did ask, and he waited five minutes 
before he went downstairs, to see what answer 
came. Sometimes he had his answer. Sometimes 
he thought he did not. But I have suspected that 
he always had it, though he did not always have it 
in his own way. I think he went downstairs better 
able to work with God that day than if he had not 
gone up, and better able to carry out the large 
laws of life ; and this, whether he were conscious or 
were not conscious of God's reply to his questions. 
These papers are for advice. I should advise 
any man who had such a closet, to keep in it a 
Bible and any other book which he liked, which 
seemed to him strong and positive, not necessarily 
to read every day, but to open, if he wanted to, 
and to take a tonic or a stimulus from it. It is a 
good thing, sometimes, to get a good flavor on 
one's tongue. 



How to Know God 289 

II. In the analogy with which we started, the 
Crown Prince really tries to acquaint himself with 
his father's methods and ways of work. The man 
who tries to acquaint himself with God's methods 
and ways of work finds himself engaged in what 
Jeremy Taylor calls the " practice of the presence 
of God." Bishop Taylor puts it in his plan of daily 
life as the third of the methods or instruments by 
which a man will secure full strength for daily 
duty. Taylor counts the " care oi time " as the 
first method, and " purity of intention " as the sec- 
ond. In these papers we have taken " purity of 
intention " for granted, and, having considered the 
" care of time," we come directly to this " practice 
of the presence of God " as a daily habit for any 
man who wants more strength than the separate 
human body could claim or expect if there were 
not a " Power which makes for righteousness " 
which can be secured in alliance to the separate 
human body. God is at work in this universe 
which is outside of me. I will find out how he 
works. I will find out what he wants. I can 
then row my boat in the direction in which his 
river flows, and I need not be pulling against the 
current, or across it, as a man might do who did 
not know how or where it was flowing. 

All that we say of the Laws of Nature is our effort 
to divide and set in order, for our convenience, 
what we know of God's present wish for this world 
and this universe, so far as we can make out their 
various processes. We talk of the law of gravita- 

19 



290 How to Live 

tion, of the laws of heat, of electricity, of cohesion, 
of attraction and repulsion. We are a good deal 
pleased when we find how closely they are related 
to each other. We then say that the different 
forces are co-related, and it pleases us to find 
that out. All this time we know that at bottom 
these several laws are so many statements which 
we have been able to make in words and figures of 
the way in which God works, who is always in this 
world which he maintains. Now the man who 
" practises the presence of God " does not permit 
any language to keep him from feeling God's pres- 
ent interest in these present affairs. It is God 
who works them out, and the Crown Prince, really 
desiring to enter his father's service, always re- 
gards them as God's affair. " In the face of the 
sun you may see God's beauty; in the fire you 
may feel his heat warming ; in the water, his gen- 
tleness to refresh you ; he it is that comforts your 
spirits when you have taken cordials ; it is the dew 
of heaven that makes your field give you bread ; 
and the breasts of God are the bottles that minister 
drink to your necessities." This is the quaint, old- 
fashioned language of Taylor, so often cited as to 
become almost proverbial, perhaps. That man is 
wise and grows stronger who can form the habit 
of tracing, in such fashion, God's present purpose 
in whatever he enjoys. Stephenson, the inventor 
of the locomotive, stood with an English nobleman 
on a terrace, and they watched together the move- 
ment of a train through the valley below them. 



How to Know God 291 

"What do you think moves that train? " said Ste- 
phenson. " One of your engines, I suppose," said 
the other, a little surprised. " Yes, indeed ! But 
what moves the engine? The engine is moved by 
the expansion of steam. The steam expands be- 
cause the water is heated. The water is heated 
because the coal is burned. The coal burns be- 
cause it is but a mass of ferns and other leaves and 
stems packed away, ready for burning, some hun- 
dreds of thousands of years ago. And these ferns 
and leaves and stems grew because the sun then 
shone over England as the sun does not shine over 
England to-day, and by its heat and light forced 
stem and leaf to pack up the carbon from that 
heavy carbonic acid of those days ; all, that when 
you and I and the rest here want it, the train 
yonder might pass from one side of England to 
another." This is the substance of Stephenson's 
answer. I do not believe that either of those men 
ran back in that way over the ages upon ages which 
have thus conspired together for the health and 
wealth and comfort of our age, without more grate- 
ful thought of that Being, whose name is I Am, 
who is the same in all time, and so arranges his 
heat, his light, his carbonic acid, his water, and 
his steam, that his children may prosper to-day 
and be comfortable and happy. 

What we call the study of natural science is, 
really, the practice of the presence of God, if we 
go in the least beneath the phenomenon — the 
thing which appears — and feel for the wisdom, 



292 How to Live 

the tenderness, the love, or the purpose or law 
which lies beneath the external appearance. And 
any man or woman who will mix in with every day's 
life some interest in nature, may be gaining in that 
interest a more close sense of the love of God and 
of his present power. The study of the plants in 
your window in winter, of the growth of seeds in 
your flower border in summer, of the crops you 
have to handle, of the weather, of the shells on the 
shore, or the lichens on the walls or the trees, may 
be made a study which brings you nearer to the 
Great Power who IS in all the universe, so that you 
shall rely upon him more, and in the end, gain 
more of his help as you work in your place in car- 
rying out his large concerns. 

III. For you have a right to remember, and 
you gradually come to know, that you can partake 
of the divine nature of this Power which makes for 
righteousness. This is the direct statement of the 
Christian religion. And the shortest and easiest way 
for any man to test that statement is to try the ex- 
periment. Let him hold daily conversation with 
God, let him every day study God's methods of 
work, let him look forward as if he were immortal, as 
an angel of light would do, let him keep the body 
under, as such an angel would do; let him keep 
up such a course of life for ten years or twenty, — 
and then let him tell us, or let him tell the world 
he lives in, whether he does not know what is 
meant by being " a partaker of the divine nature." 
Man is the child of God, the child of this Power 



How to Know God 293 

which makes for righteousness who is in all 
nature. Man is not simply the creature of this 
Power, as an oak tree is, or as a crystal is. Man 
is his child. Man can know something of his 
wishes; can know something of his purposes; 
can go about his business. If man is wise, he 
tries to do so. And in that very trial he learns 
more of those wishes and purposes and of that 
business, and partakes, as the Bible says, more 
intimately of that nature. 

The practical habit or rule to be followed in this 
has been suggested here in what has been said of 
the choice of one's occupation. I must so choose 
my occupation that it shall be in the line of God's 
present work, and that I may feel, all along, that I 
am a fellow-workman with him — just as the 
crown prince is when his father sends him out on 
a special duty in his service. I do not feel this 
when I am retailing liquor behind a counter. 
Therefore I do not choose that calling. I do not 
feel this when I am maintaining a rascal's cause 
before the court. Therefore I decline to be his 
counsel when he comes to me. I do feel this when 
I am putting seeds into the ground, and using 
sunshine and rain for a harvest. Therefore I am 
glad to be a farmer. I do feel this when I am 
running a line across the prairie, which for a thou- 
sand years, perhaps, is to be the boundary between 
farm and farm, and determine for honest men their 
rights, so that there may be no doubt, corfflict, or 
confusion. Therefore I am glad to be a surveyor. 



294 How to Live 

I am glad to work where it is clear to me all the 
time that I am at work with God, with " the Power 
that makes for righteousness." I am sorry to work 
in work where I am trying to make people unright- 
eous, to disobey law, or fight against him. I will 
not do that. Between these extremes there are 
various callings, where it is easier or harder to see 
whether we do or do not carry out his purposes. 
The hack artist who makes a vulgar valentine, 
which only gives pain if it ever meets the purpose 
for which it is printed and sold, must feel that her 
work is very little connected with the work of God. 
Yet, in the same work-shop, at her side, there may 
be sitting another, who, as she mixes her colors, 
or draws the outlines of her flowers, is thinking of 
the pleasure which her pretty picture is to give to 
some group of happy children, and is glad that 
the good God has made her his instrument for 
adding to their cheerfulness. There have been, 
thus, two women grinding their corn side by side 
with stones just like each other. You take a bar 
of stone about ten inches long, bulging a little in 
the middle, and you rub the corn grains on a flat 
stone, a little hollowed out below. You can see 
this done in the plaza of San Antonio, just as you 
could see it done in the valley of Jezreel. No 
machinery, no science, no water-power, wind- 
power, or steam-power, lightens the labor. It is 
all labor, which in itself degrades, unless the spirit 
makes it into work, which is the control of mere 
physical forces by an idea. These two women 



How to Know God 295 

were sitting side by side, and rubbing down their 
corn into meal. The circumstances of the two 
were identically the same. But one of them as she 
ground kept complaining of the hardship of her 
toil, that she was a mere bond-slave, and watched 
every little lump of the flour as it gathered so 
slowly, till she could see that there would be just 
enough for her to make her miserable lonely dish 
of polenta. And the other woman, with every 
movement of the stone, was thinking how she was 
working with God, that he was just so good 
that he permitted her to be the last agent in his 
infinite work. He permitted her to put her private 
seal on the finished success. It is indeed the last 
of a series of infinite miracles. For miracle is the 
subjugation of matter by the spirit. God has 
bent the course of the world in its orbit, he has 
directed the flames and storms of the surface of 
the sun, he has moved the great waves of air 
above the earth, he has led the clouds hither and 
thither, he has ordered day and night, summer 
and winter, has whispered to a thousand hidden 
germs and commanded them to swell and grow 
and tassel out, and in due time to ripen to harvest. 
Nay, he has whispered to thousands of men and 
women, brothers and sisters of her who is grinding 
here, that they might do their share, in preparing 
field and tools, in training and yoking oxen, in 
plowing and in reaping. Of all which the sequel 
is that she has this pint of corn which she is rub- 
bing between the stones. And now he is willing 



296 How to Live 

to give this to her, and permits her to put the last 
touch to this infinite series of agencies, that her 
children may be fed to-day. She can say to her 
little ones when she calls them to the table, " This 
is your good Father's gift to you, and your 
mother's!' I do not wonder that that woman works 
cheerfully, or that she works well. I do not 
wonder that, as the Bible says, she is taken — 
taken into the very joy of her Lord — while the 
other is left, in her own sulky selfishness. 

The true child of God, who partakes of the 
divine nature, is really a partner in the work or of 
universe. True, in proportion to the other partners 
he does not put in a great deal of work or of 
capital. But he does put in something. And the 
man who wants to gain the help of the other part- 
ners, especially of the First Partner, who has 
been willing to make his children fellow-workers 
in the great concern, likes to think of himself as 
engaged in no trivial or special business, but in 
the larger work which is helping all mankind. 

It is, then, a good thing for a weaver in a mill, 
who is in monotonous duty, rather discouraging in 
some of its details, to think of himself, not as an 
" operative " at a dollar and a quarter a day, but 
as an essential factor in God's work for the world. 
It is a good thing for a boy on a prairie in Dakota 
to remember, as he oils the running gear of the 
reaper, that he is the person whom the God of 
heaven has chosen so that the prayer for daily 
bread of some sailor in Alaska or some old woman 



How to Know God 297 

in the Scotch Highlands may be answered. It is a 
good thing for any of us who want to know God 
to accept this great offer of partnership which he 
has made to us, and to work, not as separate spec- 
ulators, on our own capital in our own way, but as 
fellow-workmen together with him. 

The more we know him, the more infinite 
strength shall we have for life, whether for finite 
or temporal duty, or for infinite and eternal duty. 

We gain this knowledge, first, by purity of inten- 
tion; next, by seeking him with all our hearts; 
next, by studying his method of work ; and again, 
by working with him. 



298 



How to Live 



CHAPTER IX 

HOW TO BEAR YOUR BROTHER'S BURDENS 

[We cannot ask for a better phrase than that of the Epistle to 
the Ephesians in which Paul bids every man bear his brother's 
burden. It is, however, rather a pity that neither the Received 
Version of the Testament nor the Revised Version recognizes the 
distinction, obvious enough, between the two Greek words used by 
Paul, — which they translate " burden," as if they were the same. 
Paul says, " Let every man bear his own <poprtov;" and then he 
says, " Let every man bear his brother's fidpos." 

The difference would be well enough expressed in English if 
we said, u Let every man have his own carpet-bag and carry it," 
and at the same time, " Let every man relieve his neighbor of any 
burden." This, as I have tried to show, was what Paul meant' 
Let every man be ready to help in lifting the world's load. $op- 
riov is something which is carried. Even the freight of a ship is 
(popriov, whence, indeed, our word " freight." The word conveys 
the idea of movement, fidpos, the other word, is dead weight. 
The attraction of gravity, had the Greeks known enough to talk 
about it, would be fidpos. You might speak of the fidpos of a 
pyramid, but not of its (popriov. 

By a natural figure fidpos means a calamity, a heavy misfortune. 
<poprtov would not be used for this.] 

We have thus far considered in these papers what 
are called personal duties. By this phrase, which 
is an unfortunate one, is meant the treatment or 
education which the man gives to himself, — to his 
own body, mind, or soul. Such duties are, in fact, 
possible to a certain extent in a desert island. 

But all this is by way of preparation only. We 
train the body or we train the mind, simply that, 



Bear your Brother's Burdens 299 

when the time comes, we may use them with most 
profit. In what have been called " spiritual exer- 
cises " the man trains his soul, that he may have 
more life ; he does so that he may live to more 
purpose. 

Now, whatever may be said or believed in other 
systems, in the Christian system this enlargement 
of the life and power of body, mind, and soul is 
sought and gained that the man may be of use to 
mankind. 

As Paul puts it, there is one body, of which each 
of us is a member, and no one member can im- 
prove himself unless he have in mind the improve- 
ment of the whole. 

Fichte says the same, in a remark which is the 
central expression of all modern social life : " The 
human race is the individual, of which each man 
and woman is a separate organ." 

This means that man is a gregarious animal. 
And just as a bee would die who should separate 
himself from the swarm and set up housekeeping 
for himself, the man really dies who separates him- 
self from the great company of mankind. 

Together is the central word. 

And when the Saviour and his apostles give such 
prominence as they do give to " Love " in the 
Christian statements, it is because " together " ex- 
presses the central idea, and no man can develop 
himself or fulfil the duties for which he is placed 
in the world, excepting as a member of the 
partnership. 



300 How to Live 

This is what Paul means when he says that 
every man is to bear his brother's burdens. 

And, on the other hand, it is at this point that 
those romances break down, or the rules of those 
religious communities, which imagine lonely Chris- 
tians. Robinson Crusoe is really an impossibility. 
That is, the conception of a man steadily improv- 
ing in his spiritual life, and growing better and 
stronger because he is wholly alone, and parted 
from other men for twenty years, is a false concep- 
tion. So of religious orders which bind them- 
selves to silence. You do not let the man in the 
next room speak to you, lest he should interrupt 
your thought of God. But the precise thing for 
which God put you and him into the world is that 
you and he shall speak to each other. You are 
not to improve your life alone, and he, his alone. 
You are to bear each other's burdens. You are to 
live in a common life. 

One cell in an oak leaf may as well expect to 
live successfully without organic union with the 
other cells, as one man in society to live so, with- 
out organic union with other men. 

I. It is best, however, to begin with acknowl- 
edging that philanthropy, or what is now called 
" altruism," because every generation likes its own 
word, often makes itself very ridiculous. In a 
comedy now forgotten, the hero, Paul Pry, whose 
name is perhaps still remembered, after interfering 
absurdly in other people's affairs, winds up the in- 
evitable wretched failure of his operations, by say- 



Bear your Brother's Burdens 301 

ing, "I never will do another good-natured thing 
as long as I live." Mr. Thoreau, by way of satir- 
izing the Christian ministry, says that if he saw 
any one coming in at the door of his cabin to do 
him good, he would jump out at the window. In- 
deed, whenever you see people who make a trade 
of philanthropy, and there are such people in the 
world, you understand Mr. Thoreau's feeling and 
sympathize with him. I was among the people 
who formed the first Emigrant Aid Company to 
assist in settling Kansas, in 1854, when "squatter 
sovereignty " was to determine whether it should 
be a free State or a slave State. There was some- 
thing at once exasperating and annoying in the 
storm of applications which we received from 
sedentary tramps, as I call them, who wanted, not 
indeed to go to Kansas, but to be clerks in the office 
at home which was to send out the emigrants. In 
various other public enterprises with which I have 
been concerned, the same nuisance has regularly 
appeared at the outset 

There is a certain class of men, best denomi- 
nated as " shiftless," who having had no success 
in taking care of themselves, or of their own fam- 
ilies, offer themselves to be servants of the public, 
and especially for that service which is the 
most delicate and difficult of all, the care of the 
poor. Such people and the failures which follow, 
almost of necessity when they are intrusted with 
that care, have done much to make philanthropy 
ridiculous. 



302 How to Live 

There is also a temptation, subtle and dangerous, 
pressing on the really benevolent man or woman 
who is not shiftless ; who, on the other hand, suc- 
ceeds in some bit of public-spirited work. Such a 
man hates to see anything fail. Perhaps he does 
see that some matter of public interest is going to 
the dogs for want of sensible oversight. Precisely 
because he has succeeded once, he thinks he shall 
succeed again ; and so he is tempted to undertake 
the second, and then the third, and then the fourth 
public enterprise which offer themselves for volun- 
teers, perhaps even to the detriment of the first, 
where he began. The fault here is not wholly his 
own. It is largely the fault of people who ought to 
have stepped into those places, but who have stood 
back for him and others like him to overload 
themselves. 

People who have read Dickens will remember 
Mrs. Jellyby and her preposterous missions at 
Borrioboola Gha. There is hardly any exaggera- 
tion in this sketch. There are just such people 
in the world, and they are not all, by any means, 
self-seeking people. They are adventurous peo- 
ple. They dislike the hum-drum of every-day 
life, and they like such excitement as correspond- 
ing with the Secretary of State and receiving let- 
ters from Africa and entertaining native chiefs at 
tea. So they have fallen into the line of philan- 
thropy which furnishes these excitements, just as 
other people, in the same necessity, fall into novel- 
reading or card-playing or travelling or visiting. 



Bear your Brother's Burdens 303 

All such people unfortunately make benevolence 
ridiculous and give it a bad name. 

In making our plans we must try to avoid their 
mistake. This we shall do by finding out, if we can, 
each one of us, what is the " duty next his hand." 

II. Something has already been said on the 
principles here involved, in an earlier paper of 
this series, on the selection of one's calling. Those 
principles apply as well when a man is looking to 
see where he can best be of use to others in the 
world. First and absolutely he is not to try to do 
everything. He is to do that which he can do 
best, if no one else is doing it, and, as between 
two enterprises of equal necessity, he may choose 
that which is more agreeable to him. But he is 
not to take into consideration his likes and his 
dislikes, unless the necessity is equal in the two 
cases before him. Generally speaking, however, 
a necessity at his side is more pressing than a 
necessity at a distance. That is the meaning of 
the proverb, which is true more often than most 
proverbs, that " Charity begins at home." 

III. To begin with, then, let it never be forgot- 
ten that the family in which it has pleased God to 
place you is the place of activity for which he 
trained you. It is that for which you are most 
fit, and where you work in every way at the best 
advantage. Many a girl has thought it her duty 
to go and teach music badly in a ladies' seminary, 
seven hundred miles away, so that she may send 
home fifty dollars a year for the education of one 



304 How to Live 

of her brothers. She would have served mankind 
much better had she stayed at home and helped 
her mother train the other children in the decencies 
of life and its larger duties, while she had left the 
brother to earn his own schooling. And, in gen- 
eral, in all this "looking for a mission," of which 
one hears a good deal, the foundation question is, 
" What is needed at home, and what can I do 
where I am?" A man of much experience once 
said to me that he had to consider, not simply 
whether he were to accept a new part, but whether 
his old part were done with him. Now, one is 
never done with his part in the family. Even if 
he travel far, there is always an electric cord con- 
necting him with pleasures or with duties there. 
Here is the reason why, when married life begins, 
woman and man both find that there is an end to 
that old anxious question, "Where is the duty 
next my hand?" That duty is now at home. 
And when the first child is born, and still more, 
when the second and third come, all the old tan- 
gles about conflicting duties come of themselves 
to an end. Room enough for unselfishness now. 
Field now for the steady growth of love ! For 
God himself has shown where it is, and where 
your work for your kind is to centre. 

IV. It is to centre there, but it is not to be con- 
fined there. Charity, or love, begins at home, but 
it does not end at home. The great text, " One 
is your Father, and ye are all brethren," means 
what it says. And the simple fact that the an- 



Bear your Brother's Burdens 305 

alogies of home life are taken, even to give us the 
forms of language by which we shall speak of the 
larger life and its pleasures and duties, is enough 
to show us what those pleasures and duties are, 
and in what spirit they are to be carried through. 
Indeed, if one asks what the Christian "way of 
life " was, or what it did, when it had no name but 
" The Way " when it started to conquer, his answer 
will be found in the success in which it follows out 
these analogies. Paul, at Rome, so deals with the 
soldier who holds him prisoner that the soldier 
comes to conceive of this larger life of Paul's, 
enters into it himself, and is ready, on his part, 
to call others into the same brotherhood. Our 
first question recurs then, where and how shall a 
man's brotherly affection pass beyond his own 
household into the world of those brothers who 
are "of the same blood with him?" How is he 
to bear their burdens, and at the same time be loyal 
in his own work for himself and for his family? 
How shall he avoid that Mrs. Jellyby folly of send- 
ing a pin-cushion to Timbuctoo, and a book on 
the Logos of St. John to the Port Royal negroes ? 
Clearly there is a limit somewhere. How is that 
limit to be found? 

Here is where, I think, such satires as this of 
Dickens's have been of use to us all. It is a great 
deal better to do one thing well than to half do 
two, and it is a very great deal better to do one 
thing well than to do a fiftieth part of each of fifty. 
Let a man remember, then, that what he does, in 



306 How to Live 

public spirit, is to be done from principle and not 
from impulse. He does it because he ought, and 
not because a pathetic appeal has been made to 
him, and he finds the tears starting from his eyes. 
Let him make up his mind in advance how much 
money, how much time, how much thought, how 
much care he ought to give to bearing his brother's 
burdens. Let him determine how he can concen- 
trate this work, so as to save wear and tear, save 
steps, save time, and save money. That is a 
charming social condition in which people live 
so simply that one is interested of course in his 
neighbor's affairs, and can kindly help them with- 
out affectation. Thus, when I live in the country, 
I can lend my books and newspapers to the neigh- 
bor's boys, or the neighbor's girls may come in 
and practise on my piano. I can watch with my 
neighbor if he is sick, and so in a thousand offices 
we can help each other. Indeed, what we call in 
towns by the grand name of the " Organization of 
Charity" is simply an effort to bring about, under 
the agency of what we call the " friendly visitor," 
the same cordial, helpful, mutual intimacy which 
exists without management in the ease of simple 
society. 

Precisely as an intelligent director says to a 
pupil, " Read what seriously interests you," — a 
wise adviser would say, " Choose what interests 
you," to a person seeking the place where God 
needs his work. "Something interests you. If 
you have a passion for dogs and cats and horses, 



Bear your Brother's Burdens 307 

find some way to be of use to dogs and cats and 
horses. Are you fond of children? Go to the 
children's ward of the hospital and see what they 
want. Are you vitally and really interested in 
politics? See that we have a decent city govern- 
ment and that the public is brought to a proper 
understanding of its duties." I remember a lady, 
one of the saints, indeed, who, as she sat at her 
window, saw a poor laborer fall from the top of a 
high building to the foundation. She saw the 
crowd which rallied round his dead body ! It is 
no wonder that from that moment she cared per- 
sonally for his widow and his children, and left 
the friendly charge of them as a legacy to her 
children. Such trace of what one is tempted to 
call " the feudal system," in our dealings with 
those whom we can help, makes the work easier 
and more cheerful. 

V. But it will not do to rely here simply on the 
" gospel of the attractions." We shall do best what 
we are fit for. But there are many other things. 
" Do the thing you are afraid to do," is one of Mr. 
Carlyle's rules, borrowed, I suppose, from Goethe. 1 
Once done, you will find that you do not fear it 
so much again. Man or woman who thus selects 
lines of life finds out, indeed, sooner or later, that 
he has done a thousand things more than he pur- 
posed. He planted, and God gave the increase. 
He lighted a lantern because he hoped that so his 
son's skiff would clear the rocks; but the same 
1 Or is it Emerson ? No one will tell me. — E. E. H. 



308 How to Live 

beacon answered as a warning for the great East 
Indiaman, and the hard-tossed frigate. The little 
experiment, in the way of benevolence, if it suc- 
ceed, will be an encouragement right and left, and 
as the Saviour's parable says, from that seed, 
others shall gather a hundred-fold. 

The truth is that, in this business of bearing 
one another's burdens, the personal element must 
come in somewhere. That personal charm or 
power by which one man controls and blesses 
another man is the evidence that we are living in 
a common life. In other words, we are all chil- 
dren of one God. The moment a true man really 
opens his heart to me, I accept what he shows 
me of himself as almost a revelation of my own 
nature, and my own possibilities. He does reveal 
to me something of God's nature which he in- 
herits, and that nature I can share with him. It 
does not do, then, for me to leave all my work of 
charity or public spirit to this or that well-knit 
organization, however wise may be its plans. The 
world wants not mine, but me, and besides direct- 
ing soldiers how to fight, I must throw myself 
somewhere into the battle. An old minister, still 
well remembered, who had many young students, 
used to say to them, " I will never ask you to do 
anything which I would not do myself; but I had 
better tell you, by way of warning as we begin, 
that I have had to black John Jones's boots, and 
to put up the widow Flaherty's stove." Personal 
presence moves the world, and only personal con- 



Bear your Brother's Burdens 309 

tact carries with it the promised gift of the majes- 
tic triumph of the Holy Spirit. 

VI. It seems necessary to say all this, even in 
some detail, in our time, which relies so largely 
in its arts on the "division of labor." Because 
I employ one man to make the head of a pin, and 
another to polish it, it does not follow that I can 
appoint yet another to " do my charities " while I 
sit at home by the fire and read Thackeray. I have 
my own personal part, and that part I must bear. 

VII. There remain the duties to the public 
in which one engages as a member of an associa- 
tion, and those which the largest association of all, 
the State, carries forward. A very happy tendency 
of our century unites us in special societies for the 
removal of wrong, which borrow their impulse 
from the great central society which we call the 
" Church of Christ." The State, once existing 
only to repel the invasion of enemies, gradually 
assumes in our times, as the kingdom of God 
comes in, the duties of benevolence, and proves to 
be best equipped for many of them, for it can be, 
indeed, imperious in its demands for the means 
required. So wide are the charities of the State 
now, and, on the whole, so well administered, that 
we find men who will join in no others. " I pay 
my taxes," such men say, " and you must expect 
no more of me." But we do expect more. 

We expect that the same skill and diligence 
which build up a man's inventions or business, 
which he shows in the books he writes, the 



310 How to Live 

speeches he makes, in the cure of his patients, or 
in the care of his farm, shall be shown somewhere 
and somehow in the care of deaf or dumb or blind 
or hungry or naked, of the prisoner, or of the 
stranger. We remind him that all these are gifts 
intrusted to him as a trustee, which no assessor 
can value, and on which the State collects no tax, 
but which, all the same, he holds in trust for the 
common good. Where he will use them, he may- 
decide. That he must use them, God has decided. 
The same rule applies here as in the personal 
kindness which one renders to his neighbors in 
need. Better do one duty thoroughly than risk 
failing in twenty. " Go not from house to house," 
the Saviour said. The warning goes far enough 
to check me, when I run from a meeting of the 
" Prevention of Cruelty to Children " to a meeting 
" for the conversion of Africans," and thence to the 
" Society for Promoting Theological Education," 
which I am obliged to leave before the meeting 
ends, that I may be in time at the " Prisoners' Aid." 
What we try to do, let that be well done. But, 
in this danger, there is no excuse for failing to 
work somewhere. 

VIII. The point most in danger of being for- 
gotten in our American life is the personal pres- 
ence, personal help, and personal sympathy of the 
private woman and the private man in the institu- 
tions founded by the State. The danger is that 
these shall be left to a dead routine. " I was in 
prison, and ye visited me," said the Saviour. It 



Bear your Brother's Burdens 3 1 1 

would have been a poor reply, as he used those 
gracious words in that central parable, had one of 
the hearers explained to him that the regulations 
of the prison commissioners are severe, that only 
on certain hours are the visitors admitted, and that 
it was very inconvenient to obey him. The genius 
of the Christian life is sympathy and mutual help, 
and the school which is left to be carried on by 
the public machinery, without the presence, on 
occasions, of fathers and mothers will be a bad 
school. The Sunday-school which seeks to run 
by machinery will not fulfil its office. The alms- 
house which is not lighted up by the visits of the 
flower-mission, the young people of the neighbor- 
hood, and this or that friendly surprise occasion- 
ally waking up its torpor, will one day develop 
some wretched misery. It is not good for man to 
be alone ; and it is no more good for an " institu- 
tion " than a man. 

Indeed, the best result which the science of 
" organized charity " achieves is the recognition 
on both sides, by the public officers and by the 
private student, of one principle. The public is 
to provide liberally the means for the conduct of 
its great charities. But, for the superintendence, 
it has a right to rely on the generous unpaid as- 
sistance of persons who give their time and their 
service from their love of the cause in which they 
are engaged. 



312 How to Live 



CHAPTER X 

HOW TO REGULATE EXPENSE 

It may seem to inexperienced readers that we 
make too sudden a descent in passing from such 
high themes as have engaged us to the subject of 
this paper. But persons who have seriously met 
life and tried its experiments know that we have 
now a very serious matter in hand. We are none 
of us living in the simplest form of social order. 
We are living in a highly organized society. No 
one of us lives by the food which he obtains by 
his gun or his arrow, but few by baking the bread 
made from the corn which they have themselves 
planted. Some of us are so fortunate that we 
do subsist, in part, on food which is more sweet 
because we have shared in its creation. But all of 
us are largely dependent, most of us are wholly de- 
pendent, on an intricate and complicated social 
system, in which we spend something, probably 
money, even for the food which we eat; in which 
we must exchange our own work, or the fruit of 
our own work, for all that we receive and enjoy. 

This is to say that we are all living in a con- 
dition of things where the regulation of our ex- 
penses comes in very early in the consideration 
of our duties. We must not turn aside from it, as 
if it were insignificant, in studying " How to Live." 

i 



How to Regulate Expense 313 

Mr. Micawber says, and he is right, that if one's 
income is a shilling, and his expenditure twelve 
pence half-penny, the result is absolute misery; 
that if, with the same income, one's expenditure 
is eleven pence half-penny, the result is absolute 
happiness. 

This is quite true, and because it is true, faith- 
ful and intelligent people determine on the regula- 
tion of their expenses, under a very distinct and 
reliable system, among the first foundations which 
they lay for successful life. 

Of course it is not in our power, in making 
suggestions for this business, to go into the same 
detail with which we can treat subjects where 
everybody's circumstances are the same. A man 
whose wages are paid him weekly regulates his 
expenses in one way ; the man who draws his divi- 
dends twice a year regulates his in another. We 
will attempt little more than to lay down some 
general principles, and enforce them by some 
illustrations or parables, which will not be so apt 
to be forgotten as general principles are, when 
memory is not so fortified. When Princess Vic- 
toria was married, who is now 1 the Empress Fred- 
erick, her father, Prince Albert, who was a good 
administrator in details, wrote her a very wise 
letter of advice in this business. I think it is to be 
found in Martin's life of him. He told her that 
she might be sure, however wisely she thought she 
had forecast her expenses, that a set of unexpected 

1 1899. 



314 How to Live 

demands would come in on her, generally very 
suddenly. He said, "Monsieur l'lmprevu will 
take care of half your income for you ; " by which 
he means " Mr. Unexpected." Young people can 
never be, made to believe that this will happen so. 
But as they grow older they know much better 
who " Monsieur 1 TmpreVu " is. This is to say, 
very seriously, they find out as they grow older 
that they are not alone in the world, and cannot be 
alone. Every one is a part of a great social order, 
which he cannot resist without forfeiting manhood 
and real life. This social order may make very 
sudden claims upon him, and these are the claims 
of " Monsieur 1 Tmprevu." I do not say that 
Prince Albert's statement for a princess, that she 
must reserve half her money for such claims, is the 
statement for all Chautauquan readers. But I put 
at the beginning of our paper this statement from 
one of the most skilful managers of our time, that 
we may be sure from the beginning to make all 
our plans with a very large margin. We will not 
think we can foresee everything. 

An English clergyman 1 has brought forward a 
plan which will be wrought out in legislation, I 
think, before fifty years are over, by which all 
young people shall be compelled by force of law to 
provide for their own old age. He proposes that a 
very heavy poll-tax shall be levied on all persons, 
say from the ages of sixteen to twenty-six. After 
this time, he supposes that they may have their 

1 Canon Blackley. 



How to Regulate Expense 315 

families to care for, and so this poll-tax will 
then be remitted. The taxes thus gathered are to 
go to a great fund, kept by the treasury of the 
State, from which, in turn, every person living 
after the age of sixty-five will receive a pension 
till he dies. I think every one will admit that 
this would be a wise and prudent plan, if it could 
be carried out, — if legislatures could be made to 
pass the laws, and treasurers were sure to be 
honest. Any opposition which is made to the 
plan will be made to difficulties in detail. But 
there is no difficulty of detail if a person is his own 
law-giver, his own subject, and his own treasurer. 
And every young wage-earner at sixteen years of 
age, in America, is able to make the provision for 
old age which is thus contemplated. The sum to 
be laid aside thus, for the exigencies of possible 
sickness, or for the decline of life, need not be 
large. But it should come into the estimate made 
for the division of expenses when life begins. 

There are some old-fashioned methods of social 
order, descending even from feudal times, in which 
such provision is now compulsory. Thus, under 
the law of the United States, when a sailor is paid 
his wages, a certain very small fraction is always 
deducted and paid into a fund which is known as 
" hospital money." The sailor thus buys a right 
to be treated free in the marine hospitals estab- 
lished for his care by the government of the 
United States in the neighborhood of every great 
commercial city. This means that because sailors 



3 1 6 How to Live 

are a distinct class, it is proved on the whole 
possible and desirable that they should insure 
themselves against the risk of sickness at a small 
fixed charge, and this is accordingly required by 
law. Old custom, which has the force of law, does 
the same thing in many of the German States for 
domestic servants. When you hire a servant you 
bind yourself to pay a small fraction of her wages 
regularly to some institution which will receive her 
as a patient if she should need care or medical 
relief. For some of the richer classes of society, 
indeed, a similar arrangement is made, so that a 
lady who finds herself without friends, at an ad- 
vanced period of life, may claim, not as a favor, but 
as a right, her home in the institution, which, from 
her childhood, by such payments she has endowed. 

With us, such artificial arrangements have not 
been generally made ; but, as has been said regard- 
ing the English plan for pensions for old age, it is 
in the power of each one of us to look forward into 
the indefinite future, and to provide in time for 
what is certain, that sickness or other calamity will 
sooner or later come. 

Before we have come to this point, some one 
will say that we are beginning at the wrong end ; 
that a man must live to-day, and that we had 
better consider what we are to eat and drink to- 
day than how we shall buy our food sixty years 
hence. I do not think so. We live in America, 
and that is the same as saying we shall not starve. 
Also and alas ! it is the same as saying that we 



How to Regulate Expense 317 

shall be tempted to run for luck, or not to be 
provident, unless our best advisers begin with 
telling us to care for our future. 

The proportion of the various expenses of peo- 
ple's lives has been very carefully studied. What 
is known as Engel's Law was laid down by Dr. 
Engel, after careful study of the circumstances of 
life in Germany. The distinct propositions of this 
law are these four : — 

First That the greater the income, the smaller 
is the relative percentage of outlay for sub- 
sistence. 

Second. That the percentage of outlay for 
clothing is approximately the same, whatever 
the income. 

Third. That the percentage of outlay for lodg- 
ing or rent, and for fuel or light, is invariably the 
same, whatever the income. , It is, in fact, 12 per 
cent of the income. 

Fourth. That as the income increases in amount 
the percentage of outlay for sundries becomes 
greater. 

Engel found that a German workman who 
earned $225 a year, a man of his intermediate 
class whose income was between $450 and $600, 
and a person of easy circumstances, all paid alike 
12 per cent of their income for their house-rent or 
lodging. It proves in this country that the aver- 
age working-man in Illinois pays 17.42 per cent, in 
Massachusetts 19.74 per cent, while in England it 
is 13.48 per cent. Our own great master of sta- 



3 1 8 How to Live 

tistics, Mr. Carroll Wright, has brought together 
the results of a large number of returns in America 
which may be studied to great advantage by per- 
sons who want to adjust their expense on system. 
We must not go into such details here farther than 
to say that on an average in Massachusetts in 1883, 
a thousand dollars expense would be cut up thus : 

Groceries $295.20 

Other provisions 197.60 

Fuel 43-oo 

"Dry Goods" 20.00 

Boots, shoes, and slippers 36-3° 

Clothing 103.20 

Rent 19740 

Sundries 107.30 

$1,000.00 

Now it is in this line of sundries, which make 
nearly 1 1 per cent of our expenditure, that people 
are apt to differ most from each other. Engel's 
man "in easy circumstances" spends 15 per cent 
for sundries. Of this, 5 J per cent is for education 
and public worship ; 3 per cent is for legal pro- 
tection; 3 per cent is for care of health; and 3.5 
per cent " for comfort, mental and bodily recrea- 
tion." It would be idle for us, as I have said, to 
lay down any specific formula. But the use of 
these figures is that we may learn really to live 
while we live, and I have copied them at such 
length that young people may see that in pro- 
portion as they have a strong will and " deter- 
mine " to reduce the proportion which they pay 



How to Regulate Expense 319 

for subsistence, for clothing, for lodging, and for 
fire, they have the more power to care for com- 
fort, mental and moral recreation, and for the 
future. The average American workman pays for 
these things in the proportion which has been 
shown above. For fuel and for rent, we can none 
of us much reduce those proportions. But, as 
Franklin found and even as Thoreau showed, the 
others may be decently brought down very far 
without any injury to health. Without going into 
detail I will say that I think every young American 
is wise who, while he is in health, lays apart 10 per 
cent of his income for a time when he shall not be 
in health, or shall have outgrown his working fac- 
ulty. (As to detail in family management, I will 
take the liberty to refer the curious reader to a 
paper in a subsequent part of this volume, called 
"What Shall we Have for Dinner?") 

As for the housing, for which these gentlemen 
allow nearly 20 per cent of our income, I have only 
this to say, in passing. If I should buy a farm from 
a great western railway, their people would take 
me and mine to it in what is called a box freight- 
car. They would run that car off the track upon 
my farm, and would let my family live in it till I 
had built a better house. My charge for " hous- 
ing" during the months I lived in it would not be 
nearly 20 per cent of my income. I think very 
likely these lines will be read by some people who 
are living in that way, and I will thank any of 
them who will write to me to tell us what he 



320 How to Live 

thinks the proportional charge for rent or lodg- 
ing should be in one's scale of expenses. 

Briefly, our object is to bring up the percentage 
for " comfort, mental and moral recreation, and 
health " as high as we can by fair sacrifice of the 
other elements of expenditure. 

In the very curious report of Mr. Edward Atkin- 
son, made last summer at the meeting of the chiefs 
of the various Bureaus of Statistics and Labor, he 
gives estimates for daily rations for men at four 
rates. One is from 20 to 45 cents a day, one from 
15 to 20, and one from 12 to 15, one below 12. 
There are eight methods given of obtaining the 
cheapest of these. The very cheapest is 1 lb. of 
alewives, 2 lbs. potatoes, J lb. corn meal, \ lb. 
wheat flour, and 1 oz. of butter. This ration 
costs 10J cents. Each ration given gives 26 
parts of proteine, 12 parts of fat, 1.1 parts of 
carbohydrates. 

The cost of a woman's food should be four fifths 
of this, and at the same modest standard would 
be. These papers will be read by many in those 
fertile States which feed the world, who could make 
even a lower estimate. I have been told that it is 
a boast in Ohio that no man was ever hungry 
there, and from my experience of the hospitality 
of the people I can well believe this. In States 
where corn and wheat hardly pay for the carriage 
to market, cracked corn, cracked wheat, meal, 
flour, milk, pork, and even eggs make up, at a 
very low price, a bill of fare sufficient to provide 



How to Regulate Expense 321 

all the ingredients for food which physiological 
chemistry insists upon. 

The days have probably passed by when a pair 
of prairie hens could be bought for five cents in 
Michigan. But, even now, the cost of food where 
food is created is so small that it would astonish 
the dwellers in large sea-board cities. I suppose 
that with the growth of the wealth of the country, 
the days of " pork and beans " as a staple of diet, 
are over. Liebig proved that the New Englanders, 
in inventing that dish, had hit on a compound which 
united in very precise proportion the necessities of 
human food. But Dr. Palfrey, the historian of 
New England, implies that this union in a national 
dish of the " flesh of the commonest animal with 
the commonest vegetable " indicates a period of 
great poverty in the colonies. 

There are many schools in America where, to 
be sure that the charges of boarding-house keepers 
are not extravagant, the directors provide a table 
for pupils who will use it, at one dollar a week. 
And, alas ! many a man or woman will give us his- 
tories of school expenditure where they " boarded 
themselves " at a rate even lower. 

I am afraid Ben Franklin is responsible for a 
good deal of horror here. He describes in his 
biography his life as a journeyman as being both 
vegetarian and economical. We take the impres- 
sion that he lived on bread without butter, and 
strange to say with a large supply of raisins. But 
this statement was written long after the time he 



21 



322 How to Live 

describes. One is reminded of that celebrated 
novel " Queechy," where a whole family appears to 
subsist on water-cresses. Indeed, the account 
which Thoreau gives of his life by Walden Pond 
at the money charge of twenty-nine cents a week 
is a parallel. There are incredulous Concord peo- 
ple who will tell you that the twenty-nine cents 
only show the money account on Thoreau's cash- 
book, and that the cold mutton and loaves of bread 
and cuts of cheese which his mother carried to his 
hut and left behind her, have not been sufficiently 
remembered. 

I hope the instructions in the chapter on Appetite 
have been sufficient to guard us against any danger 
of starvation, even for a good motive. The ma- 
chine must be fed. There must be fuel enough 
under the boiler, and fresh acid enough for the 
batteries. But what has been said in these pages 
is enough to show that, in America, the real main- 
tenance of life requires but a small fraction of the 
expense of a regular American wage-earner. 

As to the cost of clothes, a " decent regard to 
the opinions of mankind " is certainly necessary; 
but courage shows itself, first, in the determination 
not to be wholly subservient to them. Thoreau's 
rule is simply " Wear your old clothes." But this 
is absurd. Many women, most women, try to solve 
the problem by making most of their own clothing. 
But, with the introduction of machine-sewing, this 
rule, so interesting and valuable in the maintenance 
of home industry, will have to give way. In many 



How to Regulate Expense 323 

cities now it is simply the duty of many women to 
" put out their sewing," and to use their time for 
work in some more difficult grade, where there are 
fewer competitors. In the figures given in the sta- 
tistics of Massachusetts the working man of the 
lowest wages spent 7 per cent of his income on 
the clothing of his family. The working man of the 
highest income spent 19 per cent. The average 
in Massachusetts in 1883 was 15.94 per cent, and 
in 1875 was 15 per cent. The average in England 
and Germany was about 18 per cent, and Mr. Lord's 
averages collected in Illinois were 21 per cent. 

It is interesting to observe that, while the average 
American is much better dressed than he was even 
half a century ago, the average dress is much 
cheaper. Thirty men and women will now make 
as much cotton cloth as one hundred would twenty- 
five years ago. And the change with regard to 
other textiles is similar. 

On the other hand, fashion exacts more; a de- 
cent regard to the opinions of mankind exacts 
more. Thoreau might live in his old clothes by 
Walden Lake. But he was no such fool as to wear 
them when he went a-lecturing. 

It is a question of conscience for each person to 
decide, seriously and with prayer, how large a pro- 
portion of his expense should be distinctly and 
definitely for others. On this, we need make but 
one or two notes. Strictly speaking, all right ex- 
pense is for the benefit of others. You feed your- 
self and you clothe yourself only that you may do 



324 How to Live 

what God wishes you to do for the benefit of your 
fellow-men. You keep the machine in the best 
possible working order. Now this does not mean 
that the machine is to be slovenly. You are to 
polish the brasses of the locomotive as carefully as 
you oil the running gear. Yes, and you are to 
hang flowers upon the locomotive by way of re- 
joicing upon a holiday. Much of your expense 
and much of your care are given thus to keeping 
your machine in order. But not all. Part of it is 
given consciously and directly for the good of 
others. Do not be misled here in thinking it must 
be given to tramps or beggars only. That honest 
baker in the square, who sells cream cakes and 
Washington pies, is just as good a fellow and de- 
serves just as much thought at your hands as if he 
had no trade, and had come to you to beg for bread 
and cheese for his breakfast. You must decide for 
yourself. Only be sure that somewhere, of con- 
scious purpose, you lay aside a regular part of 
your income for the good of some one you are not 
compelled to serve. The State will compel you to 
render service in your taxes. And things should 
be so arranged that the rate of taxation should be 
the sign of the civilization of the community. The 
higher the taxation, the higher the civilization. 
But, beside this, if you are really to live, you must 
tax yourself by some fixed rule, as has been said. 
I cannot offer a better suggestion than that which 
is made so nobly by Starr King: "We say that it 
is the duty of every man, with any means, to ob- 



How to Regulate Expense 325 

serve proportion in his surplus expenses ; to have 
a conscientious order with regard to the service 
which his superfluous dollars discharge. Over 
against every prominent allowance for a personal 
luxury, the celestial record-book ought to show 
some entry in favor of the cause of goodness and 
suffering humanity; for every guinea that goes 
into a theatre, a museum, an athenaeum, or the 
treasury of a music-hall, there ought to be some 
twin guinea pledged for a truth, or flying on some 
errand of mercy in a city so crowded with misery 
as this. Then we have a right to our amusements 
and our grateful pleasures. Otherwise we have no 
right to them, but are liable every moment to im- 
peachment in the court of righteousness and charity 
for our treachery to heaven and our race." 



326 How to Live 



CHAPTER XI 

HOW TO DRESS 

I AM relieved from the most difficult necessities of 
this paper, because in the current volume of The 
Chautauquan Miss Ward has treated so fully the 
most important details of the subject, and has 
given so many directions which will prove their own 
value. I need not, even by way of illustration, 
allude to such details again, and I gladly refer my 
readers to her treatment of them. Our discussion 
will be more general, and may be confined chiefly 
to considering the comparative expense of dress, 
and the amount of thought and care to be given to 
it ; and such considerations will require some view 
of the importance of fashion as a factor in society, 
and indeed of dress as a test in the comparisons 
of civilization. 

I. I wish I could make the young people of the 
present day read Carlyle's " Sartor Resartus," but 
I have at last given up the effort. Everything 
that is good in " Sartor Resartus " has been bor- 
rowed and borrowed, and used in other literature 
so abundantly that when young people come to 
the book itself, which in its day was thought so 
bright and fresh, they find its doctrine common- 
place and its wit strained or exaggerated. The 



How to Dress 327 

words " Sartor Resartus," mean a " Tailor Patched." 
The original idea of Carlyle seems to have been 
to write an amusing satire upon the shams of mod- 
ern life, by showing that the various forms of social 
life are but as so many garments, of which the 
fashion can be changed at will. He would have 
been glad to work out in this way, directly or in- 
directly, the suggestion that what can be changed 
so easily cannot be essential or fundamental, that 
the foundation of life is deeper than its costume, 
and that men are much better employed in study- 
ing the foundations than they are in regulating the 
outside. But Carlyle had not far advanced in the 
papers, which were published serially, before he had 
engaged himself so seriously in the grave discus- 
sions which were to decide what the fundamentals 
are and how they are to be found, that he became 
careless about the amusing details of dress and its 
accidents, which he had meant to make the frame- 
work of the book all through. When he returns to 
them, the reader is puzzled and annoyed, and 
wishes it was not there, that he might follow, with- 
out interruption, the memoir of Teufelsdrockh, 
around which the philosophy of the book really 
forms itself. He finally forgets that he and the 
author started with the clothes-philosophy. 

None the less do I refer to it here, because we 
need to begin by remembering, as Mr. Carlyle 
bids, that it is in one mood that we determine on the 
realities of life, and in quite another that we adjust 
the details of its forms or of its costume. That is 



328 How to Live 

no accident by which, when we transfer the words 
which deal with the manufacture of clothing, to 
use them for analogies with other arts, we always 
imply blame. A tailor, a shoemaker, a milliner, 
are people who are subduing the world as loyally 
as any other workmen. A tailor's work, in itself 
considered, is as noble, as he conquers matter, as 
is that by which a farmer conquers matter. The 
work is as brave and true in the one case as in 
another. But so great is the danger of the misap- 
plication of such work, in the manufacture of this 
or that folly of costume, that to say of a bit of 
writing that it is " a piece of millinery " is dis- 
praise. Such a writer as Shakespeare will allude to 
" tailors and cobblers " as if they are necessarily 
unable to enter on serious discussion. All this 
means, Mr. Carlyle would say, that man will not 
regard the forms of things as of so much value as 
the things themselves, and his " clothes-philos- 
ophy " is an attempt to make men remember and 
acknowledge this. 

The discussion of dress should come into serious 
papers on the conduct of life, because we must 
determine for ourselves how far, in the conduct of 
life, we will be swayed in the non-essential by the 
decisions of other people, and how far we will 
undertake to regulate these decisions, or, at the least, 
to take a part in them. These papers do not treat 
the question " how to hoe potatoes " or " how to 
fire an engine." Yet there is a good way and there 
is a bad way to fire an engine, and to hoe potatoes. 



How to Dress 329 

The good way or the bad way, however, may be 
learned best by an individual with the coal-shovel 
or the hoe in his hand, and hardly depends on any 
principle of his own life, which he should have 
found by study, observation, determination, and 
prayer. In regulating dress, on the other hand, 
we are acting, first, for other people as well as our- 
selves. My friends see my clothes much more 
than I do, and my neatness or elegance affects 
them, at the first blush, much more than either 
does me. More than this, the general decision of 
the world on the matter of costume has a great 
deal to do with the economies of my costume. 
The lady who should set out to-day to clothe her- 
self in "samite wonderful," because ladies were 
clothed in it in the days of King Arthur, would 
have a long career of "shopping" before her. 
" No, Miss, we have no samite in stock ; plenty of 
gingham and calico, Miss, but no samite." Prob- 
ably she must dress in what the shops will furnish. 
It is worth while, at all events, for her to know 
where her individual determination to wear samite 
must stop, and how far the quest for it may carry 
her. 

If it be safe to digest from the " Sartor Resartus " 
twenty lines of truth, for readers who will not read 
the book because it was written fifty years ago, 
the following lines may be taken as an experiment 
in that way : Man cannot go naked ; decency for- 
bids, and in the parts of the world best adapted 
for living, the climate forbids. Man must be 



330 How to Live 

clothed. The daily work of a great number of 
men and women will be enlisted in the making of 
clothes for all. In savage life, each person makes 
his own clothes. In civilized life, work is sub- 
divided, fewer persons are engaged, and the clothing 
becomes more uniform. So the man is warmed, 
and can go about his daily affairs easily, and pre- 
sents an agreeable aspect to those who look on, 
without stopping himself to make the materials of 
his clothes, without cutting them out, and without 
sewing them together. Practically the clothing is 
almost all which the observer sees of the man. 
His face and hands are but a small part of his 
person. But let no man be deceived by this into 
thinking that the clothes are the man. And, of 
the larger man, of the human family, which is one 
body, of which we are the members, let no man be 
deceived into thinking that its clothes are the body. 
The body has its own life, and we must not regard 
the fashion of its dress as more important than 
the realities of the life. 

Whether for society or for the man himself, 
this lesson of the " clothes-philosophy " is worth 
remembering. 

I determine, then, that my dress shall be a sec- 
ondary consideration, though an important one. 
I will not be a slave to it, more than I am to appe- 
tite. But I will not offend my neighbors by what 
is a trifle in the comparison with fundamental 
realities. I may have to add the determination 
that, so far as my share goes, I will add to the 



How to Dress 331 

harmony and elegance of the rooms I am in, as I 
would have a good picture on the wall, in place of 
a bad one, if it were in my power. To carry out 
that illustration, I should be a fool if, when I 
stopped at an inn for an hour, I spent my time in 
improving the pictures on the wall of the reception 
room. It may be that the time I spend on my 
adornment for an hour is as badly wasted. I must 
have some principles which will determine what is 
legitimate, and what is waste. 

II. Now, here, what has been said on the regu- 
lation of expense is to be considered in the deter- 
mination of the proportion of expense which shall 
be given to dress. We have tried to show how far 
the true man and woman, in regulating the use of 
his income, may or ought to economize in the pur- 
chase of his food. In that determination the 
elements are more simple than they are in his 
choice of his dress. His choice of food affects 
himself and no one else. Strictly speaking, if he 
eat enough good food to keep him in health, 
no one else need interfere with his selection. But 
I must dress so that I shall not offend certain re- 
quisitions of the society in which I live. I must 
not go to an evening party in a dress which shall 
be offensive to my host or to the greater part of 
the guests whom I meet there. As we go on we 
shall see that this condition acts in such ways that 
it cannot be avoided. 

It is to be observed, also, that the expenditure for 
dress of the people who live in our modern world 



332 How to Live 

is a much smaller part of their expenditure than is 
that for subsistence. The cost of a man's subsist- 
ence ranges, it seems, in America from forty-one 
per cent of his expenditure, which is the average 
cost in Illinois, to sixty-three per cent, which is the 
highest of the averages reported in different years 
in Massachusetts. In the matter of subsistence, 
then, a half or two thirds of one's expenditure is 
determined. But, on the average, the clothing of 
a man or woman only takes sixteen per cent of his 
expenditure or hers, in the favorable conditions of 
Massachusetts, where clothing and the materials 
for it are cheap, being produced in large factories 
established for the purpose. Even in Illinois, 
where the conditions for the cheapest clothing are 
not so favorable, the average cost of clothing is 
only twenty-one per cent of the expenditure. It 
seems desirable to call attention to these limita- 
tions, because in practice, where people find re- 
trenchment in expense necessary, they are always 
tempted to reduce the cost of their clothing, with 
a kind of superstitious feeling that they are already 
living on the minimum ration of food which is pos- 
sible. It will prove, in many instances, that the 
reform of expenditure should be effected at just 
the other end. Many a girl makes herself miser- 
able by giving up her new ribbons or a new dress, 
who could save her money to much more advan- 
tage by giving up her candies, her chocolates, her 
maple sugar, and other such dainties. 

Indeed, if I am to give a practical rule, which 



How to Dress 333 

will save a deal of trouble, and will generally, 
though not always, work well, I should say that, 
generally, a person had better accept the ratio 
which the experience of his neighbors has assigned 
for this department of expense, and not try, single- 
handed, to alter it. If you live in Massachusetts, 
set aside sixteen per cent of expenditure for the 
dress of your family; if in Illinois, twenty per 
cent. Accept this as what has come about in the 
order of manufacture and trade, and do not waste 
weeks of time and care and discomfort in the effort 
to save five dollars by fighting against this law. 
On the other hand, do not go beyond it. Be sure 
that by your care of your clothing, by your neat- 
ness and simplicity, you make the dress you wear 
answer its purpose, and keep within the rule. 

The best adviser whom I have consulted on the 
economics of dress, after referring me to admirable 
articles which will be found in the journals of mil- 
liners and clothiers, and also to some clever little 
hand-books easily obtained at the book-shops, says 
that, in the matter of economy in dress, people are 
apt to neglect one important consideration. They 
should make their plans for three or four years, and 
not for one. A man's overcoat, the garment which 
a woman wears for the same purpose, furs, arctics, 
underclothing, are bought, not for twelve months, 
but for a longer period. And my adviser says (in 
1886) : " Your pupils will come to grief if they buy 
clothing simply for this year, as if there were never 
to be any 1887. That year will certainly come, 



334 



How to Live 



and the plan for clothing must be made broad 
enough to cover it. We cannot wear our old 
clothes always, as Mr. Thoreau bids us, but, on the 
other hand, much of our clothing must be bought 
with reference to long usefulness. Impress upon 
them all the necessity of constant care of their 
clothing. The question whether a coat lasts two 
hundred days or one hundred and fifty is deter- 
mined simply by the care with which it is kept." 

III. Shall I contend against the fashion, or sub- 
mit to it? 

If the fashion tampers with the health, you must 
stand against it. But this is not apt to happen. 
It does not happen nearly so often as the careless 
writers say. Fashion in most instances follows 
some general law, and is justified by considera- 
tions which do not at first present themselves. 
" Let us not treat fashion too gravely, nor let us 
magnify its inevitable importance by railing at it. 
In its essence it is not a disease, to be eradicated ; 
it is rather a passion of the human soul, liable like 
all passions to constant abuse, which must be 
regulated, and exercised in due balance with the 
other forces which go to make our life." These 
are the words of Mr. William Weeden, who has 
had the opportunity, which only a great manu- 
facturer of textiles has, to know the dispositions of 
fashion year by year. He says, again : — 

" The devotees of fashion are voluntary pioneers 
— the few who explore the new possibilities of 
dress and freely give to the slow and sober many 



How to Dress 335 

the benefit of their dearly bought experience. For 
example, remember the impression we all received 
from the long ulster overcoat when it first ap- 
peared on the fops a few years since. It seemed 
to be a preposterous caricature of a garment. But 
we soon found our conservative notion was a mis- 
take ingrained by the custom of short coats. Now 
these garments are common as any, adapted in 
price to the means of car drivers and laborers, as 
well as of the dandies who introduced them ; and 
they afford a comfort needed in the fickle fierce- 
ness of our climate." 

Here is a fair illustration of the value of fashion 
in the line of preserving health. The same may be 
said, on the whole, of the compulsion of fashion in 
making women wear thick shoes and boots. It 
must be confessed that at the same time fashion 
ruins their gait and indeed abridges their exercise 
by lifting the heel absurdly. But, as has been 
said, the questions of detail are not to be discussed 
here. So far as women's dress is concerned, the 
questions regarding health in the dress of women 
are so well discussed by Miss Woolson and others, 
in what is the standard treatise on dress reform, 
that I will not attempt them in detail. People 
who want to study the subject must obtain Lady 
Haberton's tracts and papers also. 

IV. Mr. Emerson's verdict on American dress 
is interesting, as coming from an unprejudiced 
observer, quite willing to tell the whole truth ; and 
whoever is tempted to make repression the only 



336 How to Live 

rule in the management of costume should note 
what he says of the effect of dress in " levelling 
up " the person who has been used to mean ap- 
parel. Mr. Emerson says : — 

" One word or two in regard to dress, in which 
our civilization instantly shows itself. No nation 
is dressed with more good sense than ours, and 
everybody sees certain moral benefit in it. When 
the young European emigrant, after a summer's 
labor, puts on for the first time a new coat, he 
puts on much more. His good and becoming 
clothes put him on thinking that he must behave 
like people who are so dressed, and silently and 
steadily his behavior mends. But quite another 
class of our own youth I should remind, of dress 
in general, that some people need it and others 
need it not. Thus a king or a general does not 
need a fine coat, and a commanding person may 
save himself all solicitude on that point. There 
are always slovens in State street or Wall Street, 
who are not less considered. If a man have 
manners and talent, he may dress roughly and 
carelessly. It is only when mind and character 
slumber that the dress can be seen. If the intel- 
lect were always awake, and every noble sentiment, 
the man might go in huckaback or mats, and his 
dress would be admired and imitated. Remember 
George Herbert's maxim, ' This coat with my dis- 
cretion will be brave.' If, however, a man has 
not firm nerves, and has keen sensibility, it is 
perhaps a wise economy to go to a good shop 



How to Dress 337 

and dress himself irreproachably. He can then 
dismiss all care from his mind, and may easily find 
that performance an addition of confidence, a for- 
tification that turns the scale in social encounters, 
and allows him to go gayly into conversation 
where else he had been dry and embarrassed. I 
am not ignorant. I have heard with admiring 
submission the experience of the lady who de- 
clared that ' the sense of being perfectly well 
dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which 
religion is powerless to bestow.' " 

This is to be remembered as a corrective when- 
ever some preposterous fashion, like that which 
slaughters fourteen million song-birds in a year 
for women's hats, makes the prophets speak of the 
law of " dress " as wicked in itself. To quote Mr. 
Weeden again : The stimulus given in all classes 
by the fashion " is the one social stimulus most 
profound in its source and most far reaching in its 
effects. Better culture makes the home the centre 
of social ambition and surrounds it with the fruits 
of personal sacrifice, including the offerings of 
dress and personal adornment. But in the early 
stages of individual growth there is no principle 
of social emulation so potent in the average man 
and woman as the desire ' to look like folks.' " 

V. All that we have said thus far may be con- 
sidered equally by men and women. In the phi- 
lippics of the press and pulpit on the follies of 
fashion, women generally receive the brunt of the 
attack in our day. In such absurdities as this of 



22 



338 How to Live 

the song-birds, they certainly deserve it. But it 
is probable that taking the world in general, the 
passion for good dress is quite as strong with men 
as with women. It certainly shows itself more 
among men than among women in savage tribes, 
where by virtue of their superior force, men are 
more apt to have their own way than they are in 
countries which have attained some share of Chris- 
tian civilization. Speaking of civilized fashions, 
Mr. Weeden says : " There is never absent from 
our present apparel a slight sex relationship, and 
this expresses itself very curiously. A new color 
in male garments is now almost always introduced 
by imitating a feminine fashion. But I have never 
known the ladies to take a color from our side. 
On the other hand, forms of garments seem to be 
more essentially masculine and to be often copied 
by feminine taste. The billycock hat, peajacket 
or roundabout, long ulster coat, and buttoned 
gaiter-boot, the stiff linen collar with cravat, the 
riding hat, and other ladies' - fashions which will 
suggest themselves, are adopted from the male cos- 
tume. I remember no instance in our time where 
men have borrowed a form from their sisters." 

Perhaps the whole matter may be abridged in a 
single remark of his. He says that " the draperies 
of Phidias have clothed the human form forever, 
and admit of no change or improvement. But if 
these be the epics of history and culture, the 
woman of the time, the perfectly dressed lady, is 
the lyric of her own period and breathes forth the 



How to Dress 339 

best expression which that time is capable of. 
Color softens form, and we can have social color 
only from instantaneous and changing life. That 
indescribable something, that grace more beauti- 
ful than beauty, will utter itself only in the well- 
bred lady, and she will be well dressed because 
she is well-bred." 

VI. There is one detail which cannot be passed 
by in any consideration of the general subject of 
dress, which did not come into the range of topics 
which Miss Ward discussed in her article. She 
had no occasion to refer to the questions regarding 
" mourning " and its place in the customs of Chris- 
tian civilization. 

It can hardly be denied that a person in great 
grief for the recent death of a friend will wish to 
apprise other persons whom he meets that he 
has suffered such a bereavement, by some sign 
readily noticed at the first meeting. There are a 
hundred good reasons why such a signal should be 
given, and those who give it and those who profit 
by it have an equal interest in preserving customs 
which give such a signal. Such signals are given 
in dresses which bear the signs called " mourning." 

When this has been said, however, probably all 
has been said on which this custom of " mourn- 
ing " can rest, if it is to be tested by its utility. 
Probably, also, it cannot be urged that the origin 
of the custom is to be found in the simple wish to 
give such visible sign of sorrow. The origin of 
the custom is to be found in the self-humiliation 



34° How to Live 

which wore sack-cloth arid scattered ashes on the 
head, when one was conscious of sin and wished 
to acknowledge the wrath of a supreme God, 
before whom he would not even appear to con- 
tend. In such a mortification and confession of 
failure came in the custom of which the only relic 
now is to be found in the mourning habiliments 
worn on occasions of sorrow. 

It must, however, be thoughtfully remembered 
by people who are attempting to guide social life 
under Christian agencies and principles, that with 
the Life and Light of the Gospel, no such view of 
death remains as is intimated in these customs of 
a savage religion. We do not now regard the 
death of a friend as a punishment imposed by God 
on any folly or frailty of ours. Often we regard 
it as promotion to a higher field of service; 
always we believe it is ordered in a Providence 
which understands life much better than we do. 
We submit to that Providence, and do not measure 
our wishes against its conclusions. We do not 
wish, therefore, to wear sack-cloth in token of our 
wickedness or failure, or as a confession that we 
have struck our colors in a contest where we have 
been in the wrong. 

Reserving, then, the right to ourselves to indicate 
by quietness of costume, or by some badge easily 
understood, that we have suffered loss by the death 
of a friend, perhaps that we do not want to be asked 
to go into scenes of special gayety or excitement, 
we must, in consistency, carry this custom of 



How to Dress 341 

" mourning " but very little further from mere 
deference to the habit of the community. If that 
habit comes, as it certainly does in the case of 
" mourning," from a lower notion of religion than 
ours, it is our business to modify it and improve it. 
This we do best, not by writing essays about it, 
but by abstaining, when occasion comes, from any 
change of costume, excepting such as shall give 
to friends the immediate intimation, to which they 
are entitled, that we have sustained a bereavement. 
Any thoughtful person who leads the social 
customs or opinions of the town in which he lives 
will find ample reason for considering this duty 
very carefully. The expense which is thrown on 
the poor by the custom of " mourning," at the 
very moment when the expense of sickness and 
death is hardest to bear, is a very serious matter 
in the economics of those to whom economy is a 
difficult business. The lead given by five of 
the ladies most highly considered in the town is the 
lead which will be followed by five thousand of the 
people who have least money to spend on black 
crape and other " luxuries of woe." Even if one's 
personal wish, at the time of bereavement, would 
be to drift with the current, to let one's friends 
" do what they choose about dress, if only they will 
let me alone," still there is a duty to the public of 
the place in which you live. That duty is to re- 
strict to the very smallest conditions the tokens of 
" mourning" which you place on your costumes as 
an indication that you have lost a friend by death. 



342 



How to Live 



CHAPTER XII 



HOW TO DEAL WITH ONE'S CHILDREN 

IN Miss Edgeworth's sequel to " Frank," there is 
a conversation between Frank's father, who had no 
other name, and the Engineer, who had no name, 
on the education of children. The conversation 
did not belong in the story, but Miss Edgeworth 
forced it in because it contains the essence of her 
theory and her father's, and she wanted to force it 
upon people who would not read their longer trea- 
tise on that subject. That treatise itself, now gene- 
rally forgotten, is commended to conscientious and 
affectionate parents. 

In this talk between Frank's father and the En- 
gineer, Frank's father says that he has himself 
taught Frank to ride on horseback, because he 
wanted the boy in after life always to associate the 
pleasure he took in riding with the memory of his 
father. He confesses that he is jealous of any one 
else who should come between him and his son in 
that business. 

Frank's father has a right to this gratitude of 
his son and the pleasure connected with it, because 
he is his father. And a very important principle 
of education is involved in the declaration. 

Make your children your companions, as far as 



How to Deal with one's Children 343 

you possibly can. This is the practical statement 
which is involved in the principle. 

There is a certain danger, not much but enough 
to be considered, that the Juggernaut tyranny of a 
great public-school system may do something to 
crush out that natural tenderness which ought to 
bind children and parents, parents and children, in 
one. Thus, of necessity, the school hours must 
be fixed, and they are unchangeable. All home 
hours have to conform to them. In bad schools 
there will be evening lessons sent home. Of 
course these must be learned, and so much time is 
thus taken from home intimacies, duties, and plea- 
sures. Because this is all so, it is all the more 
necessary in America that fathers and mothers 
shall watchfully keep close to their children, and 
keep the children close to them, by any device in 
amusement, in study, in daily work. There is no 
fear but the children will gladly hold on upon their 
share in this companionship. 

Suppose a growing family, of half a dozen chil- 
dren of all ages, from fourteen down. Suppose 
such a family in a city of the comfortable size, not 
too large or too small, such a city as the Spring- 
fields, or Akron, or Syracuse. Evening comes. 
Supper is over and there are two hours before the 
bed-time of the older children. What are these 
boys and girls to do, and what is their mother to 
do? 

It is perfectly in her power to go Monday eve- 
ning to a progressive euchre party, on Tuesday 



344 



How to Live 



evening to a mothers' meeting, on Wednesday even- 
ing to Mrs. Jones' party, on Thursday evening to 
the regular prayer-meeting, on Friday evening to 
the theatre, and on Saturday evening she may, with 
her husband, return the Fillebrowns' call. 

On his part, her husband may go out to " the 
store " every evening but Saturday, with such in- 
terruptions as are made necessary by the lodges, 
the " committee," the prayer-meeting, the caucus, 
and the visits of his customers from the country. 

If, with or without consideration, father and 
mother do take these courses, whoever leaves the 
children last will say, " Now be good children, be 
careful with the lamp, be sure you do not sit up 
too late, and, Jane, I wish you would give the baby 
her drops when you go to bed." 

The children will then follow the example of 
their parents as well as they can. Tom and Dick 
will roam the streets with the other boys who have 
like liberty, and make such acquaintanceship as 
Satan or any other power may suggest, in the 
stables, saloons, and mock-auction rooms. Jane 
and Olivia will do likewise, as far as they dare and 
can, — they will perhaps go across and sit on the 
door-steps with Fanny and Matilda, till the time of 
their parents' return approaches. 

After ten years the general verdict of the neigh- 
bors will be surprise that, considering Mr. and Mrs. 
Jones were such truly excellent people, their chil- 
dren should have " turned out " so wretchedly. 

On the other hand, it is quite possible for Mrs. 



How to Deal with one's Children 345 

Jones to look this matter of companionship with 
her children fairly in the face, once for all. She 
may say, " These children are bone of my bone and 
blood of my blood. Their life is my life. They 
will, probably, be more like me in tastes, in dis- 
positions, and in faculties, than any other people 
in the world. I choose them for my life-compan- 
ions. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, 
in joy or in sorrow, they and I will rough along 
together." 

This resolution will, at first, cost Mrs. Jones some 
serious self-denials. If she is living in the town 
where she grew up, it will separate her widely 
from " the other girls." That separation, however, 
really came the day she was married, and she 
promised then, with a good deal of solemnity, that 
she would meet it and all that it involved. 

Because she makes this resolution, to take the 
case named in our concrete instance, she does not 
go to the progressive euchre party Monday even- 
ing. She stays at home, and the children are 
with her. They are with her, of course. They al- 
ways have spent their evenings with her. They hate 
to go anywhere else, or to be anywhere else. In 
a household to which my memory runs back, as I 
write, she places a central lamp on a large table, 
as soon as supper is done ; the children, perfectly 
by system, draw up their chairs to the table, and 
she provides for them her stores of entertainment : 
dominoes, checkers, chess men, backgammon- 
boards, games of this and that, such as have accu- 



346 How to Live 

mulated for years. Each child has a pencil ready 
cut, and a sheet of paper to draw upon, as cer- 
tainly as he would have had bread or milk at sup- 
per. In these days it is easy to add a box of 
water-colors or of colored crayons. For the little 
children she has all the simpler arrangements of 
the kindergarten : the clay for modelling, the cut 
paper for weaving. It is no burden to her, but a 
pleasure, to oversee the evening's entertainment, 
varied a hundred fold, which takes care of itself 
where such provision is made for it; she becomes 
the right hand of each boy and girl, more than 
guide, more than philosopher, more than friend. 
She has her reward. For those children grow into 
a passionate love for her. They know how young 
she is, and how perfect is her sympathy with them. 
And every word she has to speak to them of warn- 
ing, of advice, of request or command is sure to tell. 

She has made herself their companion, and has 
made them hers. 

As we live it is not always so easy for a father 
to do exactly the same thing in the same way. 

But let him remember, as this mother did, that 
the children are bone of his bone, blood of his 
blood, that his life is theirs. Let him be on the 
lookout for chances to have them with him, and to 
interest them in his affairs. 

James Mill, the author of the " History of In- 
dia" and first editor of the Westminster Review, 
was a man of letters. Literature, or the writing of 
books, was his business. 



How to Deal with one's Children 347 

If there is any business which is supposed to 
separate a father from his children, it is this. How 
often it is said to a boy, " Don't disturb your 
father, because he is writing." 

But Mill never said so. He sat at one end of 
the study table, his boy sat at the other. The boy 
studied his Latin, and if he did not know how to 
read a sentence, he asked his father, and his father 
told him. On the other hand, if the father had a 
list of generals or of ships to copy, I do not doubt 
he pushed it across the table, and told the boy to 
copy it. That is the way in which John Stuart 
Mill was trained ; and I have not observed in all 
the machinery of our generation, high schools, in- 
termediate schools, preparatory, second primary, 
or third secondary schools, any way which has im- 
proved on that specimen of training for literature 
and literary work. 

The great advantage of farm work, as a school 
for the training of men, is that it admits so many 
chances for the father and his sons to be together. 
It is "we" who do it; the boy rides the horse 
while the father holds the plow, or the little boy 
drops the potatoes while a bigger boy and the 
father cover them and make the hills. 

The Chautauqua system shows no finer result 
than when a father comes with his daughter and 
his son for the diplomas which they have won 
together, by reading in the same course for four 
years. 

" Where there 's a will there 's a way." And the 



348 How to Live 

father who will remember that he has a better 
right to his son, and a nearer, than any school- 
board or school-master, will be on the lookout for 
good occasions for companionship. 

" George, I am going out with Mr. Tapeandrod 
to measure the lines where they are going to make 
the new reservoir. You can come with us." 

If the boy belongs to a high-pressure regulation 
school of the seventh power, he will say, " Father, 
I am very sorry, but we have to present to-morrow 
a map of Italy drawn from memory and colored, 
with all the names we can remember written in." 

It is precisely at this point that the intelligent 
father knows how to have his own way, without 
appearing to interfere with the discipline of the 
school. He does not give way, however. He takes 
the boy with him, and the boy enters into his life. 
Because the boy is his boy, the boy goes with him 
about his business. If it is necessary, they both 
get out of bed an hour earlier than usual the next 
morning, and the father shows the boy how to 
stretch the paper for the map, how to mix his 
tints, how to measure his parallels and meridians. 
The principle again is Companionship, just as far 
as companionship is possible. He enters into his 
boy's pursuits, and his boy enters into his. 

All this does not mean that the business of edu- 
cation or any business of the house is carried on 
by what we call in New England " a caucus." The 
regulation of education and the regulation of all 
the affairs of the family are to be made by the 



How to Deal with one's Children 349 

father and the mother. If they are sensible people, 
they will explain, particularly to the elder children, 
their reasons for making this or that decision. But 
they do this that it may be the easier for the chil- 
dren to adapt themselves to the decision, and they 
must not give the lower house any reason to think 
that it has a veto on the upper house ; or that if 
the two houses disagree, the arrangement pro- 
posed will not go into effect. It is hardly neces- 
sary to discuss here the reasons for this statement. 
It is enough to say that in action no executive 
office should ever be intrusted to a large board. 
The executive office must be in the hands of one 
person. And, in this very case, the husband would 
not consult with the wife nor the wife with the 
husband, unless in simple truth, and not in meta- 
phor, the husband and wife were really one. 

But if they are to explain the reasons to the 
children, there must be some reasons to explain. 
They must not be running for luck. They must, 
in the essential things, as we have seen in other 
papers of this series, have certain determinations. 
It does not follow, even, that these determinations 
are the same for one child as for another, but we 
must know what we are about. 

Here is Harry, for instance, who evidently has a 
facility for language, but is slow in mathematics 
and quite indifferent to outward nature. Most 
school-masters will want to let that boy run where 
he runs easily, and to " ease-off " as far as they 
can on the natural history and on his mathematical 



350 How to Live 

studies. But other teachers, especially those of 
the variety, too large, who like to make school dis- 
agreeable, will want to press him on the lines where 
he works with difficulty, to develop his dormant 
activities on those sides, and in a word, to do what 
they can to restore the balance which nature has 
left unadjusted. 

Now there is a great deal to be said on each side, 
and you must make your decision for each sepa- 
rate child whom God gives you. But none the less 
must you make it. When you have made it you 
must hold to it long enough to give to it a reason- 
able trial. " Go not from house to house." Spare 
the boy or girl, in after life, the miserable reflection 
that he or she was made the victim of every sys- 
tem of education which happened to come up in 
the period of childhood and youth. 

There will be found scattered through Mrs. But- 
ler's * reminiscences and other writings, many sug- 
gestions as to education, which are worth note. 
She says somewhere, rather bitterly, that women 
are in general, of nature, only too well disposed to 
turn from topic to topic, from one occupation to an- 
other, and in general to look superficially on that 
which they study. She says that in the arrange- 
ment of women's schools this tendency has been 
acknowledged and yielded to, so that a girl is en- 
couraged, or directed, to study a little French, a 
little Italian, a little Latin, a little grammar, a little 
arithmetic, a little music, a little drawing, a little 

1 Mrs. Frances Anne Kemble Butler. 



How to Deal with one's Children 351 

painting, — in short, a little of almost everything 
which can be named. On the other hand, she says, 
the average boy who receives the best education 
is kept sternly at his Latin, Greek, and mathe- 
matics, and thus gains, at the very outset, the 
habit of concentration which in itself gives him 
strength for whatever he has to do in life. This 
remark, which was made forty years ago, could 
not be so broadly made now as it was then. For 
in the better schools for women there is much 
more concentration than there was in the old- 
fashioned "ladies' seminary; " and the more im- 
portant schools for boys are, on the other hand, 
yielding on this very point, and give the boys a 
choice in a much wider range than the three 
studies which she indicates. But the remark is 
worth citing, because it probably indicates the 
side on which danger lies. 

We should never forget that we send these chil- 
dren to school, not so much to learn facts as to 
learn how to learn them. Of course there are 
some central facts which they must learn : as that 
three times three is nine, and that a b spells ab. 
But the principal business of education is to start 
boy and girl with aptitude, desire, and strength to 
follow, each in the right way, the line of life which 
he or she may have to follow. It is somewhat 
risky to give them " eleven weeks of botany," 
" eleven weeks of entomology," " eleven weeks of 
geology," " Spanish in six lessons," "Italian in 
six lessons," " French in six lessons," if we mean 



352 How to Live 

that they shall gain, in young life the persistent 
power of enduring to the end to which only does 
victory come. 

Fathers and mothers must remember what Mr. 
Hamerton says vulgar parents are apt to forget. 
It is this : that a child may be born to you of 
tastes, faculties, and consequent predispositions 
entirely unlike your own. So far as these matters 
depend on descent, it frequently happens that a 
child inherits qualities from a grandfather or great 
grandfather which do not appear in the generations 
between. Now if this happens, your problem is 
entirely different from what it is with a mother 
who has a daughter just like herself, or when a 
father has a son who shares all his tastes and 
habits, and falls directly into his concerns. One 
often sees parents who are puzzled in the problem 
thus presented to them, and quite at loss how to 
meet it. But as soon as you have found out that 
there is such a difference in " make-up" as has 
been described, the problem is much easier. " Put 
yourself in his place " is the rule which applies 
here, as it applies in every other point in Christian 
ethics. The whole matter is very well discussed in 
Mr. Hamerton's essay on " Fathers and Sons," — 
an essay which closes with these words : — 

" The best satisfaction for a father is to deserve 
and receive loyal and unfailing respect from his son. 

"No, this is not quite the best, not quite the 
supreme satisfaction of paternity. Shall I reveal 
the secret that lies in silence at the very bottom of 



How to Deal with one's Children 353 

the hearts of all worthy and honorable fathers? 
Their profoundest happiness is to be able them- 
selves to respect their sons." 

Are we not, indeed, always wishing to enlarge 
the range of home-life and to lift its plane so that 
the prospect may be more extensive ? We are glad 
to have a new picture on the walls, a new book on 
the shelves, and in any way to get more extensive 
outlook upon this world and all other worlds. Now 
what addition to the life of a home can be equal to 
this of a new person gaining in resources every 
day, who has faculties of observation and, indeed, 
methods of life which were wholly unknown to us 
before? Here is your daughter, who has brought 
into the house from the Virginia creeper two or 
three great beasts which you hate to look upon. 
They are dirty, you think them ugly, and to you 
they are in every sense detestable. She pets them 
as you would pet canary birds. Now there is a 
very great temptation to you to say that she shall 
not have these filthy things in her room. You do 
not like them, therefore she shall not like them. 
That is the very simple logic. But really this is 
simply the logic of that father whose two ears 
vibrate to two different key-notes ; who says, there- 
fore, that all music is detestable, and his children 
shall not learn to sing or play the violin or the 
piano. 

If the children have an ear for music, if, as has 
been said in another paper of this series, they are 
fond of it so as to be willing and strong to conquer 

23 



354 How to Live 

the difficulties and do the work required, you must 
encourage them to do so, whether your ear is 
accurate or no. And in exactly the same way and 
for exactly the same reason you must tolerate 
Ellen's tastes, with her caterpillars, her butterflies, 
her eggs, her cocoons, and all the rest of it. You 
must loyally put yourself in her place, as far as 
you can, help her as far as you can, and encourage 
her. Let her have all the joy of sympathy and 
never make her think she is a rebel. You can 
help her in a thousand ways. And on her part, 
she must learn to persevere to the end, to hold on 
to that which she begins upon, to do neatly, 
thoroughly, and steadily what she does at all. 
She is to feel also, that these are no matters of 
hap-hazard, to be begun to-day, and forgotten to- 
morrow. Remind yourself, also, every day, that 
the boy has an individual existence of his own. 
Do not group him with "the children" or "the 
boys," but grant to him, as a separate being, what 
that being needs. This remark includes a difficult 
duty. It is that father and mother recollect how they 
felt themselves at ten years or at twelve years, — 
and overcome the very natural habit of making the 
children younger or less capable than they really 
are. 

There is a capital little treatise by Mr. Jacob 
Abbott, " Gentle Measures in the Management of 
the Young," which contains a great deal of practi- 
cal suggestion, which inexperienced parents will 
do well to consider, digest, and remember. Much 



How to Deal with one's Children 355 

of the same philosophy, all based on a simple and 
intelligent religion, will be found in the Franconia 
books and the Rollo books. It is the fashion to 
laugh at these books now, but it will be long be- 
fore Young America has better reading. It is in 
one of the Franconia books that the rule is laid 
down for family education, which really applies in 
all legislation and in all life : " If you grant, grant 
cheerfully, — if you refuse, refuse finally." This 
means that your children are to understand that you 
have not given your directions thoughtlessly, and 
that importunity, or what they would call " teasing," 
is not going to change the decision. As you watch 
the children on a hotel piazza in summer, in their 
intercourse with their mothers, you can tell in a 
minute whether the mothers live by this rule or do 
not. One set of children will expect to carry their 
points by making fuss enough about them, while 
the other set will accept the inevitable at once, and 
make their arrangements accordingly. This latter 
set, it may be said in passing, are not only the bet- 
ter children of the two, but they are in fact, the 
happier; they get a great deal more out of life. 

It is to be observed, however, that the two parts 
of Mr. Abbott's rule belong together. If you 
mean to refuse finally in this case, you ought to 
grant liberally in that. And this is from no 
wretched plan of barter. It is not that you say, " I 
bought the right to forbid your swimming to-day 
by letting you go fishing yesterday." That is all 
very wretched and mean. But you do want to feel 



356 How to Live 

yourself, and you want your children to feel, that on 
the whole you have great confidence in them. To 
speak very seriously, you know they are children 
of God and that you can trust them very largely. 
If they feel that — because you have granted lib- 
erally — they will also feel, when the refusal comes, 
that you have reason for the refusal, and that they 
must assent to it. It is very important that they 
should understand that it is not a matter of whim. 

In all this serious discussion of principles it must 
be remembered that every hour is going to bring 
up what seem to be abnormal or exceptional cases. 
The tide does not rise on the beach without con- 
stant backward flow of separate waves and storms 
of spray — drops blown right and left in every con- 
ceivable direction. Mr. Emerson's great law, 
therefore, should never be forgotten. It is the 
same law which many a nice old grandmother has 
laid down for many a care-worn young mother 
terrified by the infinite requisitions of her first 
baby. " Dear child," the old lady says, and says 
very wisely, " you must get along as well as you 
can." Mr. Emerson uses almost the same words 
in one of his rather celebrated aphorisms. The 
authority for the statement is easily found and re- 
membered. For if you really trust the Holy Spirit, 
He will teach you in that same hour what you 
shall say and what you shall speak. 

The present help of a good God has everything 
to do with the education of children, if we loyally 
trust to it. 



How to Deal with one's Children 357 

Dr. Francis Wayland had in his study, on the 
morning of a college examination day, an anxious 
mother who had brought her son from home to be 
entered at Brown University. She was " weeping 
and wailing " about the probable dangers to which 
she must leave him in his college life, when Dr. 
Wayland, who was the president of the college, 
took his turn in the conversation. 

" Madam," said he, " do you suppose God Al- 
mighty has forgotten your boy ? " 

She said with some sobs that she did not. 

"Nor do I," said he. "Thus far he has edu- 
cated his boy with you, and now he proposes to 
educate him without you." 

Any serious man or woman, who will recollect 
how many valuable lessons he has learned and how 
many permanent blessings he has received for which 
he cannot find that any human forethought pro- 
vided, will be ready to accept Dr. Wayland's lesson. 

We will lay down such general principles as we 
can; from hour to hour we will keep our eyes 
open to do as well as we can. 

And at the same time we will acknowledge that 
a good God is caring for us and our children, and 
will order for them some things which we could 
not devise. 



358 How to Live 



CHAPTER XIII 

HOW TO REMAIN YOUNG 

IT was very early intimated in these papers that, 
if they were properly wrought out, each one of 
them would prove necessary to every other. The 
careful reader has observed that, in any practical 
rules for life given in any one of them, it is taken 
for granted that he who is to apply that rule has 
applied the others. That is to say, so far as a 
system of life is suggested here, or the mere skele- 
ton of a system, each part is necessary to each 
other. It is not pretended that any part of the 
system will stand alone. 

The suggestion was made, in caucus, that in 
this series of papers one chapter should be de- 
voted to instructions " how to grow old." So 
soon as this scheme was announced to a person 
who has proved herself a wise counsellor of our 
time, she said that that chapter must be comple- 
mented by the chapter which the reader now has 
in hand : " How to Remain Young." 

It is to be taken for granted that no one ap- 
proaches our discussion of this question with any 
expectation of profit, unless he has fairly applied 
our previous directions. It is supposed, for in- 
stance, that he has accustomed himself, through 



How to Remain Young 359 

life, to sleep regularly, to sleep well, and to sleep 
enough. It is supposed that he is trained as a 
total abstainer from intoxicating liquors, and that 
in general he has his physical appetites under 
sharp and hard control. It is supposed that he 
takes regular exercise in the open air every day 
of his life. It is supposed that he has formed 
many personal habits the importance of which is 
not less than these now named, which have been 
discussed in earlier papers; it is supposed that 
these habits are indeed a second nature to him 
now, so that obedience to them does not require 
a separate effort of the will, but follows as a mat- 
ter of course, as if it were by native impulse. 
Granted these conditions, it is not so hard for 
people to remain young as sceptics say. 

I. The writer of these lines once placed in the 
hands of a venerable lady, who at seventy years of 
age was one of the youngest people in the circle 
of her friends, the questions proposed in that 
amusing game which is called " Moral Photog- 
raphy." In this game you ask your friends to 
write, promptly and without deliberation, the 
answers to twenty questions about their tastes; 
such questions as, "What is your favorite flower?" 
"Who is your favorite poet?" "Who is your 
favorite hero ? " On the list which I gave to my 
venerable friend was the question, "What is your 
favorite amusement?" to which she replied imme- 
diately, writing, I may say, in utter blindness, 
" Hearing young people talk." 



360 How to Live 

All her friends knew that this was true. All the 
young people of the neighborhood knew it. They 
knew that they were never snubbed when they 
poured out before her their plans and hopes. 
They knew that she would be interested when 
they told her the story of last night's achieve- 
ments, or yesterday's failures. If they asked ad- 
vice, they knew that she could put herself in their 
place. The consequence was that there was a 
group of them, every afternoon, sitting around 
her as she knitted in her chair, in the corner of 
her cheerful and hospitable parlor. So far as 
they were concerned, they had counsel, encour- 
agement, and sympathy from one of the most 
accomplished women of her time. And what con- 
cerns us now is that she gained in that daily com- 
munion with people whose bodies were not worn 
out, and whose minds had not tried all the leading 
experiments, the power to look out on the world 
with eyes that were fresh and young, and to listen 
with ears that were quick to apprehend. 

The first precept is to keep much with the 
young. For this, you must meet them half-way. 
" Tom told me that you picked his birds for him 
yesterday. Did not you hate to? " This was the 
question put to Tom's aunt. Her answer was, 
" Yes ! I hated to ; but I did not let Tom know 
it. I like to walk with him and I like to have 
him walk with me, and I did not mean as little 
a thing as a drop of blood on my fingers should 
deprive me of that pleasure." 



How to Remain Young 361 

II. If one is to maintain this intercourse with 
the young, he must in certain things live in their 
life. What are those things to be? Do not make 
the mistake of selecting for your common life with 
them those occupations or amusements where 
your declining physical strength contrasts only 
against their boundless physical vigor. Do not 
try to pull as good an oar as your young friend, 
or to play tennis as well as he, or to shoot as 
many squirrels, or to walk as far. Remember 
that funny passage which I quoted from Mr. 
Hamilton, of the contrast between the cow and 
the antelope. There are plenty of other things 
where we, who have the advantage of them in 
years, also have the advantage of them in facility. 

First among these is reading. Other things 
being equal, a person of sixty reads to much 
more advantage than a person of twenty. He 
runs his eye over the page more rapidly, he skips, 
which is to say he selects, more wisely, he rejects 
nonsense more absolutely, and he knows the 
meanings of words and understands unexplained 
allusions more surely. Take care, then, to keep 
up a line of reading, or perhaps more than one, 
which will interest your young companions. You 
will find very soon that you cannot force them to 
read your favorite books by any expression of 
your admiration. On the whole, every genera- 
tion writes its own books, and you and I must 
not struggle too hard against this law. Thus I 
have long since given up trying to make my 



362 How to Live 

young friends read Wordsworth, or, as I have said, 
" Sartor Resartus." Fifty or sixty years ago 
they moved all the young life of the English read- 
ing world. And now all literature is so full of 
the spirit which thus came in that the young 
people find the original masters a little common- 
place and slow. Do not try, then, to make the 
young people read your books, but loyally and 
sympathetically select certain lines in which you 
will read the books of to-day, and keep more than 
even, as you can, with your young friends. I 
knew a charming woman who was not above keep- 
ing jam and fruits in her pantry, and a box of 
good French bonbons upon her table, because 
she fancied that these carnal inducements tempted 
boys and girls to look in and see her, perhaps not 
knowing that they were tempted, on their way 
home from school. Try that experiment on a 
high grade. Take care that you have lying about 
one or more of the very latest and freshest maga- 
zines. For many years I had on my study table 
a basket full of little pictures, riddle-cards, or- 
namented envelopes, and such little toys, for the 
children of my acquaintance to pick over. These 
young people will come for explanation and in- 
struction freely enough, just as soon as they find 
that you are willing to give either, and that you 
are really well up with the feeling, movement, and 
thought of the day. 

Oddly enough, young people who are just pass- 
ing from childhood to manhood or womanhood, 



How to Remain Young 363 

are generally for a few years very conservative. 
What they know, which is not much, they have 
learned chiefly from text-books at school, which 
are, naturally enough, generally a few years be- 
hind the times. Now to cut loose from these 
acquisitions, which have cost them so much, and 
which seem to them much more important than 
they are, is very terrible to them, and you will 
almost always find that, in serious talk about the 
problems of the day, you are rather in advance of 
their speculations. You are willing to swim out 
into the sea, while they still have their sports upon 
the beach, and are quite willing to paddle there. 

III. Dr. James Jackson, one of the Nestors of 
medical science in America, himself a wise and 
useful counsellor of men till he was well-nigh 
ninety, said that at sixty-five years of age a man 
in good health is at the prime of his life. This is 
probably true, though people do not generally 
think so. Dr. Jackson said that at forty-five the 
curve of a man's physical power began to decline. 
Probably he might, in many instances, have fixed 
that period earlier still. On the other hand, every 
man gains in experience with every year, so long 
as his memory serves him, and he gains with every 
year the advantages, almost incalculable, which 
result from doing those things by habit and of 
course, which inexperienced people have to do by 
constant will and effort. What Dr. Jackson called 
" the curve of experience " is therefore always ris- 
ing, — and, for many years of earthly life, the 



364 How to Live 

man does what he does with more ease, though 
he has not so much force with which to do it. 
This is because he knows better how it should be 
done. Now in a certain dim way, young people 
are conscious of the truth of this law, even in the 
midst of all that abounding physical strength and 
unmeasured hope which in another paper I called 
the omnipotence of seventeen. 

To make the best of the power thus gained by 
experience, we must use it unconsciously. We 
must not be thinking of ourselves all the time. 
Indeed, the less we think of ourselves the better, in 
this matter as in most others. If I am to remain 
young, I am to do so by virtue of certain infinite 
qualities, which because they are infinite do not 
change, which belong to me as a living child of a 
living God. Now I share these qualities with Him, 
and indeed with all men and women. Let me 
make the best of them, then ; and let me refrain 
from much bother or care about the special cir- 
cumstances which surround me as an individual. 
For if I fall to talking or thinking a great deal 
about my appetite, my health, my sleep, my food, 
my house, my clothes, or in general my belongings, 
these are all things changeable from their very 
nature, and belonging to that declining curve of 
life which marks the increasing feebleness of the 
physical man. By thinking of them or by talking 
of them, I compel my young companions to leave 
their own tropical land of exuberant life, that they 
may go with me exploring a frozen and desolate 



How to Remain Young 365 

region to whose habits they are not bred, and of 
whose ways they know nothing. It is a great deal 
better for me to join them, as I can, among their 
palm trees and oranges and bananas and pome- 
granates and roses, than it is for me to induce 
them to poke about with me in the short summer 
of Arctic exploration with such canned tomatoes 
and pemmican as we can carry in our haversacks. 

IV. But nobody ever forgot himself who had to 
remember to forget himself. You must push the 
little John Jones or Matilda Skimpole, who is read- 
ing this paper, quite out of the way and think of 
somebody larger, better, and less changeable ; and 
you do this, not by saying, " I will push John Jones 
out of the way," but by saying, " I will find the 
something which is larger." 

And here it is to be observed that as we advance 
in life we have a better chance to observe outward 
nature, and to study her methods and laws, than we 
have even when we are young. " Nature always 
gives us more than all she ever takes away." This 
is John Sterling's way of saying that with every 
day — and much more with every year — we en- 
ter into the heart of nature, feel what is going on 
in the infinite world of life, and sympathize with its 
processes. 

All this matter of experience helps us. For 
with every additional observation you are the bet- 
ter able to make the generalizations which unite 
or harmonize all nature's processes. If you have 
collected and pressed sea-weeds on the beach in 



366 How to Live 

Nantucket in August, you will be all the more in- 
terested in the fronds and leaves of ice which form 
themselves upon your window-panes in the frosts of 
January in Minnesota. There is no need of being 
a professional naturalist. You may make yourself 
a specialist if you will, but I should say it was quite 
as well not to be a specialist. You want to see 
how life runs through every part, and whatever 
you know of life's triumphs in one way will help 
you. The most interesting thing to me in Goethe's 
little book on " Morphology," which is yet so great 
a book, is that the observations made in it are the 
observations which any one could make who had 
the charge of what we call an old-fashioned gar- 
den. I mean that there is nothing which requires 
special instruments. There is no work with the 
microscope, for instance. There is not even the 
aggregation of a long series of careful observations, 
noted down with mechanical care, and kept for 
comparison. But there is, and that is what inter- 
ests you, the habit of a man who never looked at 
a thing without looking at the whole of it. He 
handled a rose or a buttercup or an acorn as you 
would handle your baby. He loved it and did not 
mean to forget it, and never did forget it. And 
when he found to-day some sport or trick in one 
of his flowers which he had never noticed before, 
he remembered another sport or trick which he 
did notice ten years ago in some garden or forest, 
and he connected the two. 

All this does not mean that your study of nature 



How to Remain Young 367 

is to be shallow or superficial. Precisely what I 
would advise people to do, as they grow older, is 
to select the side of natural science which interests 
them most, and to try some " sub-soiling." Since 
you were at school all modern life and thought 
has been at work re-adjusting the conditions of 
natural science. The fruit is all ready for you to 
taste ; take it and eat it. Do not leave it like the 
show fruit at a Horticultural Exhibition, but have 
the good of it yourself. All these observers and 
speculators have been at work for you. I heard 
with delight, two years ago, of an old friend of 
mine, who was living very happily and freshly 
somewhere between eighty and ninety, who had 
sent for some of the best school-books and cyclo- 
pedias, that she might study the geography of 
America. She said that when she went to school 
they had the States of Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, 
and Louisiana, west of the old thirteen, and the 
rest was all the " Indian Territory" or the " Great 
American Desert." Now that she had grandsons 
in Montana and Alaska, I suppose, and grand- 
daughters very likely in Idaho or in' Texas, she 
wanted to know how to place them. And she 
did not satisfy herself with any hand to mouth 
provision. 

My advice is well enough illustrated by this 
story. If, for instance, you are fond of a garden 
and have a garden, do not satisfy yourself with 
carrying it on as you did thirty years ago. Take 
the best gardening journal you can find, and study 



368 How to Live 

it carefully. Send for the best books it refers you 
to, and read them. " Determine," as we have said 
so often, that in some one point at least that gar- 
den shall be in the forefront. In something it shall 
be a better garden than it could have been thirty 
years ago. This means that because you have all 
the minor disadvantages of being thirty years older, 
you will have all the great advantages which belong 
to your age. 

I have spoken particularly of the study of nature 
to illustrate the occupation by which you are to 
keep yourself from thinking about yourself. It is 
the best illustration, because life in the open air is 
in itself so healthy and necessary, and also because 
the American habits, particularly of the large 
towns, drift so badly into life shut up in what are 
almost prisons. The truth is that no life has 
much chance for health or youth in which you 
are not daily an hour or two in the open air, and 
the more the better. But I do not mean that the 
illustration, though it is a good one, is to suggest 
the only form of the special avocation which you 
are to take up, so as to feel that you are in the 
front rank with the people of to-day. Albert 
Gallatin took to studying the Indian languages ; I 
remember a dear friend, who, at seventy, sent for 
the best teacher of water color, and began on that 
fascinating study. Look back on your life and see 
where your dropped stitches are. Take up some 
one of them. It may be some puzzle in history 
which has been left for you to work out. It may 



How to Remain Young 369 

be some obscure matter in literature, which you 
can make interesting to yourself and instructive to 
other people. Or there is some bit of science, 
which you had to pass by when you were driving 
the mills to do twenty-four hours' work in a day, 
and now you have the leisure to attend to it. 
Simply the rule is, select some one specific inter- 
est which you will follow regularly, at least for one 
hour a day, and in which you will be the equal or 
the leader of all others. 

And here is a reason why, as it seems to me, it 
is a pity for men in advancing life wholly to " quit 
business," as the familiar phrase is. Dr. Jackson's 
instruction was this : " After a man is sixty-five, he 
should not force himself to his duty." A doctor 
should so arrange his work as not to be forced 
to go out at night after that age. A lawyer 
should satisfy himself with the consultations he 
can have in his office, and with such other work as 
he wants to do. A civil engineer must no longer 
undertake a service which compels him to be in 
the saddle six hours a day. If this advice is true, 
an active business man should not, after he is 
sixty-five, take the executive direction of the work 
in hand in his establishment. But his value as a 
counsellor is never greater than it is now. 

We make a great mistake in America when we 
lay our older men on the shelf while they are 
still in their prime as counsellors. Benjamin Frank- 
lin was sent to France as a minister when he was 
seventy years old, and the best work he did for 

24 



37° How to Live 

his country, he did between his seventy-first and 
seventy-eighth years. The State of New York 
had an absurd statute which removed Chancellor 
Kent from the bench because he was sixty- 
five. After that time he wrote and published his 
" Commentaries," a book recognized by every 
lawyer and statesman as one of the most important 
books in the study of our jurisprudence. So 
much good did the country gain from one of the 
frequent absurdities of New York legislation. In 
England, Lord Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone are 
recent instances, well remembered, of the force 
which statesmen gain, almost by the law of geo- 
metrical progression, from their memory of the 
experiments which have succeeded and the ex- 
periments which fail, — from what I called organic 
connection with the national life of the last two 
generations. 

The truth is that the old analogies and some of 
the old saws deceive us in our social conditions of 
to-day, in which life is longer, and the human 
frame in better order generally, than it was a 
hundred years ago. Perhaps the lower races of 
mankind, and the worst fed orders of society, do 
not show much improvement in the passage of 
centuries. But in the class of men and women 
from which leaders are drawn, from which come 
teachers, authors, law-givers, inventors, or, in gen- 
eral, directors of society, these people are on the 
average in better condition at seventy than their 
ancestors were at sixty. They have a better chance 



How to Remain Young 371 

for life, they have ten years more experience by 
the measure of time; and by the measure of 
amount they have a hundred times more. One 
might not take the risk of conducting a great war, 
with a Count Von Moltke at the head of one's 
armies, when he is over eighty years old. But so 
far as intellectual force goes, and immense expe- 
rience, with the knowledge of men and certainty 
what they will do, — so far as these go, the Em- 
peror William has been wise in trusting his affairs 
to Bismarck, though Bismarck be counted such a 
very old man. Bismarck is no older at eighty 
than was Richelieu at three score. 

V. To resume very briefly our directions, he 
who is to remain young is to think of himself very 
little, to maintain the laws of health which he has 
learned, to associate largely with young people, to 
live much in the open air, and in some daily pur- 
suit to try to keep even with the best inquiry of 
his time. All this requires stern and firm moral 
force. It requires, as has been said of many other 
duties in these papers, resolution and determina- 
tion, which belong only to sons and daughters of 
God. If they mean to succeed in remaining 
young, — if, for instance, they mean to carry out 
such injunctions as have been here given, — they 
must maintain their intimacy with Him. Their 
daily affairs must be largely among those matters 
which do not change, which are the same to-day 
as they were when the sons of God first shouted 
for joy. Such realities there are, and one need 



372 How to Live 

not go far to see them. They are as easily found 
by the dwellers in the cabin last built on a ranch 
in Montana as they are in any palace in Euclid 
Avenue, in Piccadilly, or in Rome. The man or 
woman who finds these eternal realities, and lives 
in them largely, remains, as a child of God should 
do, forever young. 



Duty to the Church 373 



CHAPTER XIV 

DUTY TO THE CHURCH 
[A letter from Randall Ely to Wallace Bishop.] 

Sheridan City, Montana, Dec. 9, 1895. 

My dear Wallace, — We are blocked in by 
a first heavy storm. I am ready for it, and it 
may snow as long as it wants to, for all me. 
Among other excellent results, the snow gives me 
a chance to write to you my long-promised long 
letter. 

What you say in both your last notes interests 
me, not to say amuses me. For you are, literally, 
just where I was here, nine years ago, though 
you are only five hundred miles from your base, 
which is Chicago, and I am nearly two thousand 
from mine, which is New Haven. You are in a 
lumber region; I am in a mining region. You are 
seeing civilization begin ; I saw it begin. You are 
nine years later in this business. Behold, as the 
Frenchmen say, all the difference. 

And now you want to know what you are to do 
about the Church. That is just the question I had 
to answer when I came here. 

This place was wholly broken down. The old 
company had blown up. They had sunk a lot of 



374 How to Live 

money, literally; and, virtually, had never made 
one cent. Their agents and engineers had hoped 
to feather their own nests, and had not even done 
that. They had gone away. There were a few 
wretched cabins and shanties, in which perhaps 
two hundred poor creatures hung round, really 
because they did not know where to go to, — some 
of them because they had some sort of property 
here which they could not sell. 

As to morals, — I do not say religion, — as to 
decency even, or deference to any social standard, 
there was no such thing, and never had been. 
Your old joke, about the Laccadive islands, was 
true here, "As for manners, they had none, and 
their customs were very filthy." 

One of the women put it to me once, in a word. 
" Before your people came here," said she, " it 
was Hell." And really it was. 

I should be loath to say that the men in charge 
before me planned the ruin of the men and women 
here. But I cannot see that they planned their 
good. And, I tell you, Wallace, there is eternal 
truth in what Byron makes Satan say: 

" He that bows not to God — has bowed to me." 

These men — gentlemen, if you please — said 
to themselves, consciously or unconsciously, " The 
Company has employed us to make silver here, 
to open these shafts and to get out this ore. Sil- 
ver we will make, if we can. On week-days we 
will work for the Company. BUT, Sundays are 



Duty to the Church 375 

not the Company's. Sundays are ours, — for our- 
selves. Sundays we will do as we choose, and 
the pick-men, and the mule-boys, and their chil- 
dren and their wives may do as they choose." 

And if anybody had said that all these people 
were going to the dogs, the gentlemen in charge 
would have replied, " That is no concern of ours ; 
we are here to make silver for the Company." 

Well, I did not look at it in that way; and I 
am glad to see that you do not. I am in the 
same boat with these "people." If they go to the 
bottom, I shall go to the bottom. And certainly I 
do not think I shall save my soul if I sit by and 
see them lose theirs. I had therefore the same 
question to ask which you are asking. 

Well, the organized Church of Christ, whether 
at Rome, at Princeton, at Baltimore, or at Middle- 
town did not do much to help me. But it 
did something. In fact it did more than I sup- 
posed it would do at the beginning. There was a 
dear, dried-up little fellow — twice as old as I am 
— who came round on a little burro he had, 
about once in six weeks, and held a meeting 
Sundays. Afterwards, as soon as I gave any 
signal, I found no lack of fellows among our- 
selves, most of them good fellows, who were 
willing to lend a hand. 

I came here two or three weeks before my wife 
did. The plan was that I should make ready for 
her. As the second Sunday came on I heard 
that this Elder Breen was to hold service. The 



376 How to Live 

" keeper " of the property, who had been in charge 
through the interregnum, told me this rather 
timidly, because he was not sure that he should 
have given the permission. 

But I relieved him there, and told him that 
Elder Breen would be my guest. And when 
Saturday noon came, I sent down a boy and a 
mule to meet the Elder and bring him directly to 
my cabin. It was but poor hospitality, for we had 
to make our own coffee, and fry our own pork. 
But it showed good will, and the old man and I 
have been good friends from that day. It ap- 
peared very soon, as I tell you, that the people 
in charge before me had not cared for him. And 
he thanked the Lord very heartily that my heart 
was warmer. 

Well, I put the Elder through with all the 
honors. I played the flute in those days, and I 
took my flute to the shop, and played one part of 
the hymn tune while he sang another. And then, 
having conferred with him, I announced that there 
would be a Sunday-school, and that it would begin 
that day. And then and there it began. 

They sent me, well, I guess, fifty volumes, — 
not what I should have chosen, but much better 
than nothing. I told that quiet-looking Nadur 
boy whom you remember, — the same who drove 
the day we went to the Ledges, — I told him that 
he must be librarian. They had sent record 
books and forms, and Jason lent out the books and 
kept them carefully. The men got interested and 



Duty to the Church 377 

used to bring in what was left of the books they had 
picked up on the trains. I wrote home, and made 
them clear their shelves for me. It was a wretched 
collection of books; but it was a library, — and, 
on the whole, it did not do so much harm as 
equal allowances of poker would have done. 

But the " Library " had not been intrusted to us 
without conditions. We had to maintain a Sunday- 
school, if we meant to have their Sunday-school 
Library. And I told Marcus that he must take 
hold ; Julia knew that she must. Mrs. Stevens, as 
soon as she came, was all ready. And whenever 
any boy, or girl came for books, Jason was coached 
to say that if they had our books, they must enroll 
themselves as pupils in the Sunday-school. To 
tell the truth, they were willing enough. The old 
owners had never shown any positive interest in 
the Eternities. They did nothing directly for the 
morals or the life, indeed, of these people. But 
nobody in America has dared, as yet, to cut in 
upon Sunday. So there was no work in the shafts 
or in the furnace on Sunday ; and it was rather a 
slow day to most of them. Card-playing? Yes, 
no end of it. Prospecting, hunting, — but no 
regular work. And the idea of a meeting at the 
carpenter-shop — call it Sunday-school or call it 
caucus — was not unpopular. 

" Unpopular " is the only word. I mean that 
without any definite religious conviction which 
expressed itself in words, there was more than a 
willingness to see the Sunday-school opened. It 



378 How to Live 

was rather the intention of the community that it 
should succeed. 

Now, do you know, Wallace, I believe that it 
was rather an advantage to the "movement" that 
we had nobody of pronounced ecclesiastical train- 
ing among us. I mean that none of us had ever 
done this thing before. And none of us had any 
right way of which he was sure. There was no- 
body to be dubbed "Elder" or "Reverend" 
or "Parson" or "Deacon." "We" were simply 
the agent, and the cashier, and the freight master, 
whom these men and women had had to do with 
Saturday, and would have to do with Monday. 

"Also, especially," as my old German master 
would have said, no one of us would have been 
selected as a Sunday-school teacher in the First 
Presbyterian Church in Ne-w Wittenburg, or in the 
Second Methodist Church in Epworth. So that 
each of the other fellows whom you could most 
rely upon for any public-spirited enterprise 
laughed when he found that he must be a Sunday- 
school teacher. 

For me, I said squarely to the little crew of us 
who organized the thing, that I should only make 
a Bible lesson ridiculous. But I would have a 
class on the Constitution of the United States. I 
said that there was religion enough in it, if only a 
man could " distil it out." And I said that I be- 
lieved more men and women from the teamsters' 
families and the shaft-men would come to my class 
after the second Sunday, than if I taught about 



Duty to the Church 379 

the book of Deuteronomy, of which, indeed, I 
knew nothing. 

And I remember that Mrs. McGregor told the 
company what Freeman Clarke said to her. He 
had bidden her take a class in his Sunday-school. 
She had said that she did not know enough. To 
which he replied, that if she had thought she 
knew enough he would not have asked. " But I 
suppose," said he, " that you could read the Swiss 
Family Robinson to a class." Of course she had 
to confess she could. " Do that," said Dr. Clarke. 
" If you can entertain for an hour eight little street 
children who have little enough love in their lives, 
they will learn by the object lessons that some- 
body loves them, and they will have their first 
lesson in bearing each other's burdens." 

And, in point of fact, Mrs. McGregor did begin 
with the Swiss Family Robinson, with those Finn 
children, — nine or ten of them. "The tempest 
had now lasted eight days," — what a happy be- 
ginning ! 

No, none of us knew much about theology. 
Indeed, as to our religion, as the old joke says, 
we had none to speak of. But we did mean that 
that camp should have more life in it, and that it 
should be a better place to live in. 

The first experiment we tried, after the begin- 
ning with the library, was the music. Tisdale 
undertook that, and Janet. And they made the 
people understand that they really wanted a crowd 
to come. It was rather hard for the rest of us, at 



380 How to Live 

first, to keep our classes up in face of their com- 
petition. Before the thing had gone far, we had 
to leave the whole carpenter-shop to them ; and I 
fitted up the attic over our offices for the other 
classes of the school. But this was not popular, 
and it ended in the music class having its meeting 
after the other school was over, so that a good 
many of our classes lapped over and went to them. 

Tisdale used to talk like an oracle about this. 
" All music is religious," he would say. " Music 
is the first handmaid of religion." He had some- 
thing he quoted from Collins's odes which we used 
to chaff him about. Practically, he would say, in 
a mining camp or in a forecastle, you can get 
more people to sing together than to do anything 
else together. "And TOGETHER," he would 
say, with one of his grand gestures, "TO- 
GETHER, as the Dominie says, is the central 
word." 

So he was very tolerant when they began, as to 
what they sang. A good many of them were old 
soldiers, and they would sing, " Marching through 
Georgia," and " John Brown's body." But the 
handful of women, not to say some of the men, 
knew the words of familiar hymns, and all of them 
soon caught on to the Sankey rhythms and ca- 
dences, the time and the airs. Tisdale made an 
old Welsh smelter we had, named Jones, dig to 
the bottom of his blue chest, and exhume a violin 
which by this time had neither bridge, nor bow, 
nor strings, nor key-board. But Tisdale sent down 



Duty to the Church 381 

to Cheyenne City for these, and the next Sunday 
Jones appeared with his fiddle and I with my flute. 
Tisdale said he would order jews-harps for the 
crowd, if any one would volunteer. He said jews- 
harps were the fit instruments for the Psalms of 
David and Asaph, and could hang on the willows 
when we were not practising. In fact we never had 
any. But the fiddle and the flute gave courage for 
other instruments, and Tom, Dick, and Harry did 
what they could. 

All this did no end of good, in bringing men and 
women together on a decent basis. Drinking men 
and teetotalers, Americans and foreigners, the 
office-clerks and the shaft-hands would sit side by 
side, holding the same music-book. If the thing 
had been forced, nothing would have been more 
absurd than to see Carruthers, the cashier, sitting 
on the same bench with old Cesar the black man 
from the stables. But, really, Cesar's was the best 
voice among the basses, while Carruthers directed 
from that bench. And when they took the same 
book, of course, and unconsciously, I, who was 
nothing but a high private, felt that the kingdom 
of God had come. 

Oh dear ! If you could only have seen how we 
astonished the dear old Elder by our first per- 
formance. He was not to arrive until eleven 
o'clock. He had stayed at the Crossing, where 
the old shaft was begun, with Flinders, who was my 
man in charge there. He had some sort of meet- 
ing in Flinders's shed, and then Flinders brought 



382 How to Live 

him up to us. Well ! the dear old saint did not 
expect the music of the spheres. He and I could 
grind through Antioch and Benevento. But from 
the people — why, we had had no books, and he 
expected nothing. But this time, when he and Flin- 
ders came within hearing, there was the sound of 
many waters. The Hallelujah Chorus, it may have 
been. We did not stop when they came in. And 
the old man, as we all called him (forty-eight years, 
in fact), may well have imagined that he was on one 
of the outside benches of the Paradise The place 
was crowded already; and I remember that so 
many people came that we had to carry the two 
carpenter's chests which made the pulpit out of 
doors, and the people sat under the shade of what 
the Elder was pleased to call a " green bay-tree." 
(I remember that afterwards in some double patent 
revised version I found that this was a terebinth- 
tree.) 

Well, that was our first full service, and the 
fame of it went far and wide; wherever a burro 
could climb that week, the word went that we had 
had a real meeting at the " hollow," with a fiddle 
and sackbut and real cornet ; and that there was a 
" lib'ry " there, and first-rate fixings in general. I 
soon found that whether I meant it or not, we 
should have a larger concourse the next Sunday 
than we had had. But I was not frightened now 
we were all in for it. I sent word to all the other 
camps that we wanted them to come over, and to 
the men whom I could rely upon, whether foremen 



Duty to the Church 383 

or pick-men, I sent personal word that we should 
rely on them to help us through, whether in the 
way of prayer or exhortations. Before the Elder's 
Sunday came round again things were running as 
regularly as an inclined railway. And although 
the old man came eight times in the year till he 
froze to death in that awful blizzard, we came to 
think that our own meetings were quite as profit- 
able as his. 

When the first winter came, I took care that our 
second ore-shed should be cleaned out, and we 
planked up the sides with one window in each side, 
so that we need not sit in pitchy darkness. And 
this served us for our meeting-house till we built 
this nice little shebang which we have. I made 
the company order two large stoves for me at St. 
Louis. To tell you the whole truth, I think we got 
along better without a minister. Whenever we did 
not have one, we had no talk about heresy. 
Truly yours, 

Randall Ely. 



384 How to Live 



CHAPTER XV 

DUTY TO THE STATE 

The Young Citizen 

What can young people do for good citizenship 
and public spirit? 

I am afraid that the question first makes people 
think of elections and primary meetings, votes and 
voters. 

To consider such matters first or chiefly would 
be a very narrow view of a very important matter. 

The truth is that all our American institutions 
rest on the passion for freedom and free thought 
in every man and woman. This passion took 
form in English life as long ago as Alfred ; it 
came to America with the very best of the English- 
men of the Puritan age ; it is all wrought in with 
all the American arrangements for the State, and 
with most of the American arrangements for the 
Church. Good citizenship in America means the 
maintenance of this central idea of personal free- 
dom and personal duty. It involves the right of 
private judgment and the duty of private judg- 
ment, and the American constitutions all rest on 
the presumption that almost all citizens will insist 
on the right and discharge the duty. 



Duty to the State 385 

Good citizenship means the determination of 
each man to do his own duty to the State. He 
will not be led by a boss. He will not be ordered 
by any lord, feudal or ecclesiastical. He will stand 
for his own rights, and for the equal rights of 
every other man. And this is as true of women 
as of man. In this view, the inability of woman 
to vote becomes, in comparison, unimportant, so 
large is woman's opportunity to discredit and de- 
stroy feudal or ecclesiastical control of individual 
opinion, whether attempted by fashion, by the 
Church, or by whatever outside tyranny. 

The first, second, and last duty of every good 
citizen, man or woman, is to level up the people 
whom they can act upon. Let them highly re- 
solve that each one of them shall vote, act, live, 
move, and have a being as an independent child 
of an Infinite God. Not one person in the body 
political shall be a slave. And no baron or squire 
or knight of the shire shall enslave one of them. 
No overseer with a whip, no boss with a list of 
followers, no liquor dealer with an unpaid bill, no 
ecclesiastic with threats of hell, no chief of Tam- 
many or head centre of a lodge shall enslave 
them. To maintain and to enlarge the individ- 
ual's passion and his right to think for himself, 
to say what he thinks, and to do what he says, is 
the first duty of the young American. 

Simply, the first duty of the young American is 
to keep the People up to its work. The People 

25 



386 How to Live 

must be able to carry forward the great responsi- 
bilities of sovereignty which devolve upon the 
People ; the People must not fall backward ; the 
People must go forward. And this cannot be un- 
less every man, woman, and child who has a con- 
science is personally enlisted in the duty of keeping 
the People up to its duty and destiny. 

In comparison with this necessity pressing on 
every man, woman, and child, the special cares of 
an election are the merest trifles. The result of 
an election, indeed, really depends on what the 
People is or is not. The election infallibly goes 
well when the People of a region has been well 
trained for the duty it has in hand ; and almost in- 
fallibly the election goes ill in a region where the 
People has not been so trained. That is to say, 
in one instance you get good candidates offered 
by all parties, and you therefore have a successful 
election. In the other instance, you probably 
have bad candidates offered by all parties, or 
whatever the candidates, you are almost sure of 
a bad selection. The real work is not the fussy 
work of caucuses and committees; it is done in 
advance in the training of the People. 

It follows then for young men or young women 
making the arrangements of life, that they must 
determine how and where they will serve the 
commonwealth ; how and where they will serve it 
every day. 

There is a certain danger to the young American 
if he rests too much upon the impression which he 



Duty to the State 387 

gains from literature. And in practice, I find 
myself saying to boys, " You are not to be an 
English duke, living on his estates in the country," 
or to a girl, " You are not to be a Lady Bountiful, 
carrying a bottle of sherry in a basket to a peas- 
ant's cottage, and followed by a servant with a 
pair of blankets." Why, there is not a duke within 
three thousand miles of you, and there is not a 
peasant any nearer ! It is really an important part 
of your education that you should know your own 
country. You must understand America. I may 
add it is a very difficult part. Books, as I have 
said, do not help you much. The newspapers help 
you very little. They are, almost without excep- 
tion, provincial and local. You will have to learn 
for yourselves. By far the best thing which a boy 
gets in college is his acquaintance with com- 
panions from distant States, possibly from Mexico 
and Canada. Young people especially should re- 
collect this, and by system acquaint themselves 
with all sorts and conditions of men. Together, 
which is the central word of Christianity, is the 
central word of a Commonwealth or Republic. 
Let us never forget that what we call a Christian 
Commonwealth is what the Saviour of Men called 
the Kingdom of God. Of that kingdom the cen- 
tral principle is, that the children of God shall 
bear each other's burdens. If they must do this, 
why, of course, they must learn each how his 
brother lives, — nay, what his brother is. 

In a small village, or a country town, till its 



388 How to Live 

population comes to ten or twenty thousand, some 
of the important details in this matter take care of 
themselves. Generally speaking, though with cer- 
tain exceptions, everybody knows everybody. All 
the children in the same neighborhood go to 
school together. There are no very sharp or hard 
social distinctions, and practically every one knows 
how everybody else lives. Now the difficulty of 
finding out how other people live is the first diffi- 
culty in the study of citizenship. 

Even in a small country town, however, there is 
apt to be one place for observation and for work 
which needs special attention of people who care 
about citizenship. Almost infallibly in some out 
of the way corner, perhaps three or four miles from 
the centre, there is a precinct of shanties or broken- 
down houses, dirty, hateful, and every way neg- 
lected, inhabited by a set of half outlaws whom 
" nobody knows." They are outside the pressure 
of all public opinion. Such a place is generally 
known by some slang name, such as " hell corner," 
or the " devil's den." In extreme cases, you shall 
read that the inhabitants of the neighborhood, with 
a certain indignation which they think righteous, 
move upon such a place, warn out the inhabitants, 
and burn their houses down. But this is a very 
crude way of handling such an evil; you move the 
place, but do not cure the wound. Now the first 
thing to be done towards a cure is that the good 
citizens of that place shall learn all about this 
corner. They must find out who these squatters 



Duty to the State 389 

are, how they live there, and why they live there. 
They must take the same interest in them which 
they take in some mission Sunday-school to which 
they contribute in India, and they must know 
much more about the detail. 

In larger towns, the difficulty is to find how 
people live who are close by you. Here the week- 
day life of the churches ought to give a good 
opening. It is a very good thing when an intelli- 
gent leader in the community brings down his own 
magic lantern to the vestry of a church to enter- 
tain fifty or sixty errand-boys, cash-boys, hostlers, 
newsboys, and others who would be a little apt to 
be loafing on street corners, if he and people like 
him were not making their acquaintance. It is a 
very good thing when a professor in a college, 
perhaps the best read man in town, makes a 
regular business in visiting in their houses all the 
members in his Bible class. It will prove, very 
likely, before a year is over that such teachers have 
learned quite as much as they have taught. 

I do not mean that there is any mechanical 
school, or formal organization, by which the people 
of a great city can learn what is so hard to know, 
how their neighbors live. As with all other 
learning, the secret is in this, you must want to 
know. There is no catechism to teach the method. 
You must always go a little more than half way, 
and then the social gulfs will bridge themselves, 
the broken bits in your mosaic will of themselves 
fuse together. 



39° How to Live 

With such a beginning, you can go forward. 
You are able now to teach and to learn, and you 
are not well engaged unless you are doing both. 
Suppose you are a visitor on the staff of some 
charity organization. If you keep your eyes open, 
and your ears open, you will have learned quite as 
much before the winter is over from this family 
which you are to care for, as you have taught to 
them. Among other things, you will have learned 
the lesson that money is not the most important 
commodity in the world. A little money may go 
a great way, used as it should be. 

But money without tenderness or sympathy, 
when money is mere alms-giving, is of so little use 
that critics have a very good right to say that it is 
of none. If it only brings into the house so much 
bread and milk and meat which tide along wretched 
physical life for two days or four days or six, it is 
hard to say that money is of any use at all. As 
Rufus Ellis said so well, " You do a man no good 
unless you make him better." 

Bear this in mind then in such " visiting," that 
it is yourself which you take into the house. If 
you go to teach, expect to be taught ; if you mean 
to give, expect to receive ; if you hope to lead, be 
willing to be led. " Give and take" is the rule, or 
it embodies the principle. 

But young man or young woman who does seek 
to be of use thus to people in more unfortunate 
life, is soon terribly tested. There is absolutely 
no romance in the matter. There is less romance 



Duty to the State 391 

in it in any Atlantic American city than anywhere 
else in the world. For here the poor people you 
would help are probably separated from you, as 
they are in daily occupation. Bishop Phillips 
Brooks used to say that Philadelphia had an ad- 
vantage over most American cities, because the 
narrow streets were mixed up with the broad ones, 
and the people with the largest means lived within 
easy touch of people with the smallest. It used 
to be said of Paris before the days of " elevators," 
that there was a real social advantage in the 
pecuniary arrangement by which people paid a 
small rent if they lived a hundred feet from the 
sidewalk, while they were yet living close to richer 
families who lived in lower stories of the same 
house. 

Easy communication between people in different 
degrees of prosperity is in itself a minor advantage. 
But suppose it do not exist. Where there is a 
will, there is a way, and I should be sorry to believe 
that I have any readers who cannot find an Italian 
fellow-citizen, if they want to talk Italian. If we 
want to " touch elbows with the rank and file," we 
can do so. " Some of my neighbors tell me that 
they have so many pears that they cannot tell 
what to do with them." Judge Thomas said this 
to me one day, and he added, " I have a great 
many in my own orchard, and if I send them to 
the right places, I do not find that they come back 
to me." 

I hope, however, that no reader will be misled 



392 How to Live 

by this illustration which, for mere convenience, I 
have taken from the physical relief of the poor in 
cities. To suppose that that form of charity is the 
first or chief duty of a public-spirited citizen is 
wholly un-American. The truth is, that in some 
towns, quite large, there is no poverty of that sort. 
In many towns there is very little, and we are 
making it less and less all the time. There is " not 
poverty enough to go round," if we mean to rely 
on the physical relief of the very poor for our 
training in public spirit. It will not happen to 
one in twenty of the readers of these lines that his 
duty to society is with the starving or the naked. 
Very likely he would not know how to deal with 
them if his duty were there. The truth is, that 
each of us needs a great deal from each other. 
Let the reader ask himself how much he needs 
from the people around him. The richest man 
and woman both need a great deal. And all these 
" great deals " will not and cannot be supplied 
without that steady toning up of all social life to 
which the gospel sends us. Looking back on life, 
— if I may speak of my own work, — I think God 
has let me be of much more use to one or two Japa- 
nese gentlemen of high rank and fortune than I 
ever was to any Italian beggar. In finding out 
your place to take hold then, in finding where 
your apostleship is to send you, dismiss at once 
this Old World notion that only those people are 
poor who have not good clothes. Remember 
that everybody is poor; that it is fortunate for 



Duty to the State 393 

you and me that it is so; that you and I are as 
poor as the rest of them. It is because each of us 
needs something that each of us, without a trace 
of condescension, should find his place and do his 
share. 

No man or woman can reject such duty and 
retain any sense of honor. Look around you in 
the place where you live, and see how much has 
been done in the past for you which you are en- 
joying to-day. Pioneers have broken the ground ; 
wise men have made plans, and strong men have 
carried them out, — all that you may go and come 
with the comforts you enjoy. In my own home, 
the city of Boston, the wealth in common of the 
people, the amount of property which has been 
invested for the common good, is estimated at two 
hundred and fifty millions of dollars. The annual 
interest on this at four per cent is ten million dol- 
lars, which represents the annual cost of the com- 
forts which I, and those like me, enjoy, in the social 
order of that town, wholly apart from such service 
as is paid for by the annual taxation. This is not 
an exceptional case, but it is a good, convenient 
illustration of what would be found true in every 
American State, so large has always been the pro- 
vision made in the past for the future. 

In mere decency and honor I must do my share 
in handing down such a future as that to those who 
come after me. I will not drink at such a foun- 
tain, and sully the water for those who follow 
me, or let other people sully it. I am bound in 



394 How to Live 

honor to keep high the social life of a city so 
endowed, that God may find the children as well 
off as were their fathers. 

I should hope that any young man or young 
woman might approach social duties with some 
sense of the varied acts of friendship, due from 
each to all, which a republic demands. When you 
open a club for working girls, when you arrange 
a Christmas tree, when you go to some chapel 
to teach a boy arithmetic, or to the industrial 
schools to teach drawing or cooking or sing- 
ing, or to make an evening pass with some 
glimpse of life higher than what the streets have 
to offer, — you are working out your share of 
the citizen's duty to the State. You have your 
hand then in a great political problem — the great- 
est of all. Short-sighted people will ask you 
whether you ever went to a " primary meeting," 
as they call it; and how you can pretend to be a 
good citizen unless you have been there. I cer- 
tainly think that young men will learn some things 
they had better know, if they should go there, 
and that the primary may be improved by their 
presence. But he has a very fair answer who can 
say, " The night you were at your primary, I was 
teaching German boys to read English. " You and 
I have a more pressing duty in the making good 
citizens than we have in offering good candidates. 
This we ought to do ; but we ought not to leave 
the other undone. You never find, when an elec- 
tion is over, that the distress of defeat hangs over 



Duty to the State 395 

the moral and peaceful and intelligent communities. 
Republican government works well enough with 
them. It is in your " Five Points," it is in your 
" Bloody Fifth," and your " Black Fortieth," that 
come in the fraud and the fighting which make 
those men despair of a democracy, who have 
done nothing to make things better. And, as 
always, the remedy is a larger dose of applied 
Christianity. The " Bloody Fifth " and the " Black 
Fortieth " are to be purified and ventilated by 
the hand-to-hand contagion of the Golden Rule, 
of the Good Samaritan, of Christian love. It is 
true that your working girls' clubs, your Sun- 
day-school missions ; what you do for fine arts ; 
what you do for health and hospitality and 
the beauty of the town; your Christmas trees, 
your free library, your Christian Union and 
Associations, and your Christian church which 
inspires and dominates all of these, — it is here 
that they are looking and tending. And you are 
much more closely engaged in the duty of a citi- 
zen to the State, when you are at work in this 
hand-to-hand affair, than you are when you are 
delivering a speech before a caucus, or writing a 
political article for a review. 

And, as we saw, we are not to consider the 
" Bloody Fifth" or the "Fighting Fortieth" 
alone. All human society is to be made divine, 
the finest as the coarsest. That is our business. 
Euclid and Michigan Avenues, the Fifth Avenue 
and Columbia Heights need divine life as well as 



396 How to Live 

any Italian or Chinese colony. Does not every 
morning newspaper show that the duty and dif- 
ficulty of the hour spring from a certain jealousy 
which people try to excite between men of small 
incomes and men of large incomes? What have 
you who read, or I who write, done to allay that 
jealousy, or to prove that it is unfounded? It is 
but a few days since I heard a foreman in a 
gigantic corporation, when he was asked why 
they had no strikes among the thousands of men 
in their employ. His proud answer was, " Our 
first and constant effort is to put no men in the 
lead who do not understand the workmen and sym- 
pathize with them, and I think the men know and 
trust their leaders." There is a bit of applied 
Christianity which the reader and I may well take 
to heart. We shall do well, wherever we are, if we 
keep in view an ideal as noble as that, and bring 
society to act upon it. 

It is, of course, impossible, in a paper like this, 
to try to assign to any reader the detail of such 
social duty which he is to follow. But this is clear 
enough. Each of us, in making his own choice, 
as each of us must, is to remember this intimacy of 
man with man, and woman with woman, touches 
close on the immediate questions of government. 
It touches them, because it gives the suffrage to 
men, and takes it from slaves. You make men 
respect themselves. They refuse, at that moment, 
to take this bribe for their vote, or to follow that 



Duty to the State 397 

banner, or, which is as bad and more mean, they 
refuse to escape a tax, or to stay away from an 
election. Your republic is no longer ruled by an 
oligarchy, say of one third of the citizens. Men 
who respect themselves insist on giving themselves 
to the better policy of the city, of the State or the 
nation. And it is not one vote which such a man 
gives, or two. It is his moral power, his intel- 
lectual ''direction, which is uplifting all the time 
the thought and will of those who are around him. 
The great issue goes to an intelligent and con- 
scientious jury, — the men and women who have 
highly determined that there shall be no class of 
drudges, and no stinking slums, omnipotent in 
appointing that high tribunal. 



THE END 



MAR 9 1900 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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